“Please don’t do this Dad.”
“Ellen,” Sotello said quietly. “Do you think for a second this was his first time doing something like this? How do I live with myself if I allow this mook to beat up my daughter, and then let him go on to do someone else’s daughter? We all make decisions in this life. You decided to go in the house. He decided to beat you up. I have decided to make him pay for it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“No matter what happens to him, I want to know that nothing will change between us. I can almost see those little gears churning inside your head, taking responsibility for everything.”
“Nothing will ever change between us Dad, ever. I just don’t want to lose you. You could end up in prison, adding another thing, for my stupid little error in judgment to make me responsible for.”
“You get some sleep now. I won’t let anything happen to me. Life remains a gamble as you found out when you talked me into going along with your field work.”
“You won’t let me forget this any time soon I imagine, will you?” Ellen asked.
“I am afraid, little missy, this episode will remain burned into my memory for a long time to come. Would you like to make a wager on the next time I let you out in the field?”
“No thanks. I will go out in the field a much wiser operative, so I am sure you will allow me out as soon as I am able.”
“Yea right, go to sleep.”
Chapter 10
Retribution
Craig pulled up in front of the family home in Castro Valley, and opened up the house. Although he and Ellen both retained keys to the house they grew up in, most of the interaction they managed with their father, still took place as they helped him out at his office. He always wondered why his Father had never sold the house, and just lived at the office. It would come in handy now, because their rooms remained much like they were when he and Ellen lived there, only cleaner. He went over and lit the fireplace, and turned the thermostat up to seventy degrees to take the chill out of the early fall weather.
Craig heard his Father park outside. Craig propped open the front screen door. Sotello had gone around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, reached in, and picked Ellen up as if she were still a child. He straightened slowly away from the car to avoid hitting her head. Craig hustled over and closed the car door for him. Following Sotello into the house, Craig shut the door behind them. Sotello set Ellen down on the sofa in front of the fireplace, while Craig shoved a pillow under her head. Sotello glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Only five till seven Craig. I need to make a call to Pete, and I do not wish to do it from here. Can you make Ellen something to eat while I take care of that?”
“You bet. Ellen, what do you want me to make you?”
“Anything out of a can, you have nothing to do with either touching or preparing.”
Craig chuckled. “Very funny. I’ll be right back.”
Sotello knelt down by his daughter and took her hand in his. “I will be right back little girl. How are the pain killers doing?”
“Real good Dad, just enough so I don’t feel much pain, and not enough so I sound like I just killed a fifth of booze.”
Sotello patted her hand, and got up to leave. He went into his bedroom to retrieve the 9mm automatic he kept by his bedside. He went in the kitchen, where Craig stood by the stove, heating Ellen’s soup. He handed the automatic to Craig, who stuck it into his waistband, without a word, pulling his sweater over it.
“Although I didn’t notice a tail, I want to cover all the angles until we leave.”
“You really think someone may have followed us?” Craig asked.
“No, but with my luck today, I would not overlook anything. I will lock the door when I leave. I will knock twice when I come back. I wish old Gyp were around. I expect I am going to need to get over losing him and get another dog.”
“Everything will be fine until you get back Dad. Go on.”
“Okay, Bub, stay loose.”
Sotello locked the door on his way out, and took a close look around at the surrounding area. No traffic went by in either direction while he stood there, and there were no unfamiliar vehicles within his eyesight. Sotello drove a few miles away to a supermarket he frequented once in a while. He used the public phone to call Pete.
Pete answered on the first ring.
“Pete, any word?” Sotello asked.
There was a pause and then a click on the line. “You bet Jim. I have it parked three streets down from your house. I put the key in a hideaway right on the frame under the driver’s side door. It’s an 85 Econoline, and the windows are black. The back’s empty. Leave it in the same place when you get back Jim. I have it right in the middle of Catalina Dr.”
“I owe you Pete. It will be back there by dawn. I will settle up with you later and buy you a beer.”
“You owe me nothin’ Jim, and you know it. I will keep you to your offer of a beer. You can tell me all about it then.”
“Okay, but no way am I letting you off without charging me, so be prepared.”
“Give me any trouble big boy,” Pete said gruffly, “and I will have to open a can of whup-ass on ya.”
Sotello laughed. “See you later Pete.”
Sotello drove back to the house. He knocked on the door twice. Craig let him in. Sotello saw they had put a movie in, and were watching it while they ate popcorn. He walked around to the front of the television to see what they had decided on for a movie.
“Overboard, you guys are watching Overboard again?”
Ellen chuckled. “You liked this movie Dad. Sit down and watch it with us.”
Sotello checked the time, and then sat down in between them. He put his arm around his daughter and sat back. “You will have to stay alert a bit until Craig and I get back honey. I will leave you the shotgun right next to the couch. Just watch television until we get back.”
“You guys will both end up in prison, and I swear I will not visit either of you.”
Craig leaned over. “What would you want to do if I were sitting there where you are with cracked ribs and a smashed face?”
Ellen started to speak and then paused. A smile spread over her face. She reached over and placed her hand over his. “I guess I would be heading out with Dad to take care of business. Be careful.”
___
Craig drove, while Sotello changed into an all-black outfit. He took what looked like a small black club out of his bag and laid it next to his seat. Next he took two black, pullover masks out of the bag. Both men were already wearing thin black leather gloves.
“Drive carefully Craig. We do not want to get stopped.”
“I am Dad,” Craig affirmed. “What do you have next to you?’
Sotello picked up the small flexible club next to him, so Craig could glance at it. “It’s a sap Craig. You can kill with it, and you can incapacitate, depending on the touch.”
“How do we get him out where we can take him?”
“We’ll have to be patient, and I will have to move into a position where I can snag him when he does come out. I want you to call him on the phone from the van. Tell him Fletcher’s mother told you to call him, and let him know the woman who came to see them earlier has come back. Tell him she’s in a van outside, watching the house again. We will park just a bit down from the house.”
“When he approaches the van, I will help him inside. You throw open the side door, before I get there with him. After I get inside, get back behind the wheel, slowly turn the van around, and leave. I will begin the reeducation class while you drive. We will drive him where I showed you on the map, and dump him along the side of the road. Then we go home, and park the van where Pete can pick it back up before dawn. We go home and stay there.”
“Will he buy that Dad? How would the mother know what Ellen would be driving?”
“If he thinks about it, he would not be fooled. He may get mad, and just storm on out to take a look. If h
e doesn’t, I will have to come up with something else. If need be, I will go in there after they are asleep.”
“We will be in a jail cell if you have to go that route,” Craig said.
“Don’t bet on it kid. Let’s hope he moves before he thinks though.”
“You have done this before,” Craig commented, “haven’t you?”
“Only once with something involving our family,” Sotello replied.
“That girl Nicola’s parents, when I was nine, right?”
“I know why that sticks out in your mind.”
“I never saw Mom so frightened when those assholes wrote on our house.”
“We were lucky. Remember, they threw bricks through the windows of the other three houses their little darling had run-ins with.” Sotello shook his head, remembering one of the most frustrating events he had ever had in his married life. “All the damage, and three families moving out of the area, just because of a nine year old brat, with two crack-head parents, and a grandmother who could not control her. You weren’t even one of the kids she had a fight with.”
“Yea, but when you and Mom said she could not come over to the house anymore, she went bizzarro on us. That girl was disturbed.”
“At least those girls on her Grandmother’s street she fought with had the pleasure of smacking her around a little,” Sotello said ruefully. “All your Mom and I did was tell her not to come over to the house when we were not there, and to stop calling on the phone every five minutes. Then she tried to set you up as stealing some girl’s jewelry at your school. When I talked to the grandmother, and found out the parents were living in Hayward on the street, and they were regular customers for the nearby crack house, I had you shut off all contact with the girl.”
“Yea, then she got into the fights on her street, and up came the parents with a few friends.”
“If not for Gyp barking his brains out,” Sotello said, “they would have done in our windows too. Bad enough they threw brake fluid on my poor Dodge, and slashed all the tires. Then to write ‘kill, your kid is next’ on the front of the house, well, you know how that worked on your Mom. When the police did their usual ‘we have to catch them in the act’ bull, your Mom went ballistic.”
“Ellen and I got scared when those other families moved out, rather than stick it out.”
“They would have stayed, if not for that same Cadillac the crack-heads used in their little raid, showing up in front of all of our houses at odd hours of the early morning. Gyp would growl, and I would leap up to check, and your Mom would get upset all over again.”
Craig laughed. “They stopped coming after you left the screen out of your bedroom window, and aimed the shotgun at them.”
Sotello nodded. “They were going to do more than stop that time. I waited until I heard the doors open. I just didn’t give them enough time to get out on the lawn before I popped up. You should have seen their faces when they saw the barrel of the twelve gauge staring at them. There were four of them, three men and the crack-head mom. Their mouths dropped open, and I almost let loose. I realized then just how frustrated I had become from the constant tension, and dealing with your Mom wanting to throw away everything we had and flee the area.”
“But they never did come back after that,” Craig said.
“They were in the hospital, and then they were unable to do much after they got out, other than concentrate on walking slowly.”
“So you found out where the parents were, huh?”
“And the two friends,” Sotello replied. “They all hung out together down in Hayward, panhandling and doing crack. They would spend a lot of time in the crack-house when they had enough money. I identified the friends with them, and staked them all out over the next week. Pete supplied the vehicle for me just like now. Your Mom drove, and…”
“You’re kidding,” Craig interrupted. “Mom drove the van on this mission?”
“Actually it was a Pontiac Bonneville with tinted glass. I had no intention of trying to trick all four of them into a van. I knew they would be at the crack house sooner or later. The second time your Mom and I went out, we struck pay dirt. Your Mom was my back up.”
“Huh?” Craig said incredulously.
“What, you think your Mom was scared of these shitheads? They frightened her because of you two kids. Hell, it was all I could do to keep her from going in with me. I told her I needed her to keep my escape route open. See, the crack-heads went in through the front, where the mooks who kept everyone in line were. The back door exited into a backyard with a fence, and on the other side of the fence, another street. Your Mom dropped me a few houses down from the crack house, and I stayed in the shadows until I could get close.”
“What did you take in?”
“I had a sap just like the one I showed you, ducting tape, a lead pipe with a taped handle, and a snub nose .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. I took out the guard they had in front with the sap, and duct taped him by the side of the house. I pulled my mask down then, and snuck inside the seventh level of hell. They kept the place dark, except for a few candles. No one heard me, because they had some crap rap blaring. The second guard hung out just inside the door. I lead piped him in the head, because I could not get the drop on him. He did not survive.”
“Jesus Dad, you went Rambo on them.”
“Craig, I was so pissed, I could have taken an M16 in there and hosed them all down. When someone turns your world upside down, and everything you ever cared about, or achieved, starts slipping away from you, it works a mind trip on you. Sooner or later, you deliberately take care of the situation, or you go postal on the wrong people. No one even noticed the guard go down.
I went through the house until I found them. The four of them were together in a cesspool of a room on the second floor. Not that I cared, but only one of them died. The two friends and the mom survived. The father saw me come into the room, and had started up from this mangled futon they were all doing the pipe on. I almost took his head completely off. The mother I smashed right in the face before she could scream. I went to work on the two friends, who were so wasted, they barely knew I was there until I busted their knees. I broke them all at the knees, elbows, and one each right at the base of their spines. I went out the back, and not one person had stirred.
We went directly to Pete’s place, where I burned everything I had on, along with the sap, and Pete cut up the lead pipe for me. We dressed, and came home. Pete took care of the car, just in case anyone had seen it. It made all the papers, but just as we had figured, no one cared about a bunch of crack-heads. Your Mom and I made the principal at your school revoke the girl’s out of district permit, and that was the last we heard of her.”
“They will trace this guy back to us quick though,” Craig pointed out. “He lives in a residential section of Placerville, and the cops will put two and two together.”
“Did I say the aftermath would be simple,” Sotello asked smiling. “You wanted to come up here and start blasting before we were even sure of who had done it. I want this prick to know who did it, if he lives. I told you the story, because I wanted you to know this is no game we are playing. People do not always survive their mistakes. This guy may not survive his.”
Craig watched his Father’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. Sotello turned and looked at his son. Craig could see the intensity even in the poor light from the dash. “Look Craig, when I saw your sister in the emergency room, the only thing keeping me sane was the thought of what I would do to the one who had done it to her. If the guy’s dumb enough to come out to the van, he may survive the night in a diminished capacity. If he stays in the house, I will let him fall asleep, and then I will put an ice pick through his head while he sleeps next to the Fletcher woman. Can you do this, Craig?”
“Yes Sir, and then some. The sight of Ellen in that hospital almost made me puke. He has to pay for that.”
“Good, let’s hope he falls for the call,” Sotello replied. “Keep the call s
imple, and use your range on this to give him a deep base voice. Be ready to throw open the side door when I take him. Say nothing. Do not talk or make any sound. If I nail him right, he will not know what’s going on anyway, but we take no chances, okay?”
“I understand. Will you kill him if we get him in the van?”
“I don’t know boy, I don’t know. I may say one thing now and do another. It will depend on how well I can keep from thinking about Ellen. Do you know what you will say to him on the phone?”
“Louise’s Mom told me to call you,” Craig said in a gruff bass voice, as Sotello listened. “Someone in a van will be up taking pictures tonight. She said to warn you.”
“Perfect,” Sotello confirmed. “Then hang up.”
“Why do people think they can get away with doing something like he did to Ellen?” Craig asked.
“Because they’re too stupid to care,” Sotello answered. “They have been getting away with it all of their lives. The rule of law breaks down when people manage to skirt our laws, or the authorities refuse to enforce them. Kids grow up, in rich or poor neighborhoods, testing the water constantly, especially if they do not have parents who care. If the authorities do not move in early, and make them pay for each and every time they break the law, they grow up thinking if they can get away with it, then it must not be wrong. Sometimes they end up dead, or in prison, or unfortunately, President of the United States.”
Sotello went on after a moment. “Sometimes they grow up doing all they can on the edge of what the authorities call the law. Men did not beat up strange women when I grew up, not just because usually a husband, father and brothers were around, but because it was wrong. The world has been turned upside down since then.”
“Riding the vengeance trail pilgrim ain’t exactly the way our forefathers wrote the law either,” Craig said in his best John Wayne voice, causing Sotello to laugh in appreciation.
When Sotello could talk again, he reached over and clapped his son on the shoulder. “Thanks boy, I needed that. You’re probably right. We may definitely be hitting the outlaw trail after this mission.”
Sotello: Detective, ex-FBI, ex-Secret Service (DeLeo's Action Thriller Singles Book 1) Page 10