“Stupid bitch!” one of the men yelled, as all of the men jumped out of the car, with their money bags, to make a run for it. They could see the sportscar turn the corner, and begin heading their way.
Amelia jumped out, too. It was each man for himself, but their options were few. They either ran into the Mom and Pop store on the corner, or ran into the long, winding alley beside the store where they had a chance of getting out on the backend.
They all took the alleyway.
Hammer sped across the sidewalk toward the alley, and jumped out of his car, too. The police were on their way, but he knew they were not going to get there in time and he wasn’t about to let gun-toting bank robbers get away with the loot they had, nor the murders they committed. Because he wasn’t the only one shooting inside that bank. Although he took out two of theirs, they took out the guard and wounded a few of the patrons as they ran out like the cowards they were.
Hammer pulled the gun out of the hip holster hidden inside his jacket, checked the chamber to see how many rounds he had left, and then ran into the alley. He saw one robber as soon as he entered, and aimed and fired at him just as he was about to turn the corner. His aim was dead on, and the robber hit the ground instantaneously.
But by Hammer’s count, there were still two others and the driver. Hammer took off, running toward the corner the downed gunman had been about to turn. But he waited at the corner, and then turned quickly, aimed and ready to fire.
But he saw no one. He kept running. He wore blue jeans that were tight across his thick thighs, and the adrenalin had him sweating under his armpits, but he couldn’t have felt more comfortable than if he was in his living room watching football. He loved this shit!
But it wasn’t until he had turned another corner did he feel as if he was getting somewhere. He got into a shooting match with one of the robbers, killing him, and then eyed the getaway driver as the driver was just ahead of the downed robber. The driver stopped suddenly, knowing the gig was up. But to Hammer’s surprise, although in this day and age he was not shocked, it was a girl.
“Freeze!” he yelled, as he aimed his weapon at her. “Hands in the air and freeze!”
Amelia quickly complied and threw her hands in the air.
Hammer began walking toward her. “Hit the ground now!” he yelled in that authoritarian voice that made her assume he was a cop. Cops who loved to yell were the worst kind of cops in her opinion: crooked cops. She was as good as roadkill, she felt. Just another statistic that he could claim was self-defense. Was resisting arrest. Was so belligerent he was forced to stand his ground. Was bullshit.
She knew she had to make a run for it.
But first she had to catch him off guard. “Are you looking for those white men?” she asked. “I saw them. I saw them run out of the alley toward that playground.”
“Put your hands where I can see them,” Hammer said, “and get down!”
But Amelia knew it was now or never. As she moved to the damp and dingy ground inside the alley, she grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on. “Why are you detaining me?” she asked, as she realized the big rock was in reaching distance. “What did I do?”
And without looking, she grabbed the rock and threw it, as hard as she could, toward Hammer’s head.
Hammer ducked, and the rock flew wildly by, but it was enough for Amelia to jump up and run around another corner. She was hoping he would hold his fire. She was hoping her line about not being a part of the robbery gang would give him enough doubt to hold his fire. But she knew she was on borrowed time.
And even more borrowed than she thought. Because she had barely cleared the corner when Hammer was upon her. He jumped on her, knocking her to the ground. She screamed, but he put his gun to her face. “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled.
And then they were face to face: he was on top of her. Their faces were an inch apart.
He was stunned by the pain he saw in her big, green eyes.
She was stunned by the care and concern she saw in his big, blue eyes.
And somehow she knew, as if she’d known him forever, that he was not her enemy. Somehow she knew that he could be the one to finally rescue her from her hellish life. But she also knew that would only be possible if she believed in fairytales.
She didn’t.
Hammer didn’t, either. She was just another young and dumb criminal as far as he was concerned. Although, deep inside, if he was to admit it, he felt as if there was something more than that; that there was something more to her. And it caught him off guard. It shook him.
And the fact that he had these emotions inside of him, for some stranger, angered him. He pressed that gun against her skull because of that anger. “When I tell you to stay down,” he said between clenched teeth, “you keep your ass down!”
But then those eyes, those beautiful bright, emerald-like eyes of hers, went dark. “Behind you,” she said. “He’s coming behind you.”
Any other criminal and Hammer would have dismissed it as a distraction tactic out of hand. He was young, but he’d been around that block too many times to fall for that. He knew better. But something in her eyes made him know something else: she was not lying. Those eyes were not lying!
He quickly rolled over and fired a shot just as the robber behind him was about to fire too. The robber dropped hard, and his gun fell from his hand. He was the third and final robber that had left the bank, by Hammer’s count.
But the gun that fell from his hand didn’t land far, and the robber began reaching for it, to make Hammer’s demise his last act on earth.
Hammer didn’t want to kill the man if he could help it, so he jumped up and ran to beat him to the punch. He got to the gun just as the shooter reached it, and there was a brief tug-of-war that ultimately ended with the robber’s death. But in the skirmish, Amelia had jumped up too, and was gone.
She was running for her life. Not just to get away from the man she assumed was a cop. Not even to get away from the cops whose sirens could be heard arriving on scene, with car doors suddenly opening and slamming shut far behind her. But she was mainly running to get away from Bulldog and his abusiveness. She was going to leave him once and for all. She was willing to run to the ends of the earth if it would get her away from that bastard.
But she only made it to the end of the alley.
As soon as she ran out of the backside of the maze of an alley, a van sped up and stopped beside her. She knew it was one of Bulldog‘s vans. He always had her followed, and undoubtedly had been told by those following her that the bank heist had gone south. One of his men got out, slid the van door open, grabbed her, and flung her inside. She was in prison again. She was in hell again.
He slid the door shut, got back in the front passenger seat, and the van sped away.
But inside, and to her shock, Bulldog was there. She had no clue that he planned to watch how she performed on her first job. But that was how he was. He could be protective as hell, as if he loved her to death. And he could be abusive as hell as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her. But he always crazy, she thought, as a motherfuck.
But Bulldog Valtone was never so thrown by events that he couldn’t take a moment to teach her a lesson. And his lessons, from the moment her “mother” dropped her off at his house, always came with pain. He took his open palm and slapped her so violently that the side of her head slammed into the side of the van. She heard a ringing in her ear. But she was used to that, too.
But, to her amazement, she didn’t think about what Bulldog was going to do to her. As she rode away in that van, she was thinking about the man who had captured her. That big, beautiful man with the caring eyes. Even as Bulldog yelled mercilessly at her.
“Get up! Are you deaf? Get up!”
She opened her eyes and realized she wasn’t with Hammer back in that alley, or even with Bulldog in that van. She was in that dark room with Weasel and his men, and they were yelling for her to get up.
Her eyes hurt fro
m the light behind the opened door, and she held them over her forehead. But she apparently moved too slow for Weasel because, as soon as she thought to get up as they had ordered her, he tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her out. To her death, they undoubted thought. But she thought about her son, and her brothers, and yes, even her son’s father. And she thought differently. She was going to live and not die.
They thought she was going to die. She knew she was going to live.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Yeah, I was guilty,” Flex said to his buddies hanging out on the corner. “I was guilty as a motherfuck. But that fool didn’t know it!”
They all laughed.
Then an old Chevy pulled up against the curb. It had heavily tinted windows and rims that cost more than the car. But typical for that neighborhood. When Flex saw the car, he broke away from the crowd and made his way toward the car. The door unlocked, and he got in the backseat. “About time your ass made it,” he said as he was getting in. “I was about to bounce if you didn’t bring your ass on -whoa!” When he turned, and realized that Hammer Reese, not one of his goons, was sitting in that backseat, he was stunned. “You?” he asked. “You came?”
But Hammer didn’t react or explain his actions. It was obvious that he had come. He sat there, in his tailored suit and dark sunglasses, and continued to stare forward. “Which one?” he asked.
“Minnesota Boulevard,” Flex said. “Building 16. Third floor. Number 38.”
Hammer continued to stare forward, waiting for more.
“Two knocks, and then a pause,” he told Hammer. “Make sure you pause. And then a third knock. That’s the code to get in.”
But Flex was still baffled. He was still staring at Hammer. “She must be something mighty special,” he said, “to get you in the field.”
Ozzie Jones, who was seated on the front seat, turned around. “That’s none of your gotdamn business on any gotdamn day. Get out,” he said to Flex.
Flex frowned. Wanted to tell Ozzie to kiss his ass. But was too afraid he’d kick it instead. He got out of the car.
The car sped off. Flex, brushing off his clothes as if he was brushing off dirt, went back over to his hangout partners.
“What up, nigga?” one of them asked. “Look like you seen a ghost.”
Flex continued to watch the fleeing vehicle. Ghost his ass. “Worse,” he said.
As they drove to the Minnesota Boulevard housing projects, Hammer sat quietly in the backseat. But Oz could tell he was in deep contemplation. He’d known the Hammer for many years. Admired him above any man alive. But whenever Amelia Sinatra or Reggie Dell were involved in any kind of risky activity, he went into a quiet funk. It was something about those two ladies that changed Hammer from the heartless hard-ass he was, to a man with heart. And even Oz, who was closer to Hammer than anyone, didn’t know which one of the two ladies had the upper hand.
But if Oz had to put money on it, he’d place his bet with Amelia. Because whenever it was Amelia who was in danger, Hammer’s funk took on a sadness too, as if he had so many regrets about their relationship (or lack thereof), but never figured out how to resolve those regrets. He was in that kind of mood as they drove.
But as they drove, Hammer didn’t realize he was in a funk. All he could think about was Amelia. All he could think about was getting her back to him and to their son without a hair on her head breached. He knew she was into shit. She was Amelia. She was going to be into shit and there was nothing he nor anybody else could do about it. He had a security detail follow her around because of that very fact.
But she reminded him constantly that Bulldog Valtone used to have men following her around, and she hated it. “Don’t have people following me,” she warned with that sincere, unrelenting look in her eyes. “Nobody owns me like that anymore.”
He saw how deeply she felt about it, as if it was a violation of everything she held dear, and he thought about cutting it out. She was her own woman and was going to do it her own way. He had to accept that.
But he worried sick about her. And although he ended the security detail for a minute, he reinstated it months ago. Although, after what happened earlier that morning, it had done him little good.
But why he was even bothering with a woman like Amelia was a mystery to him. He didn’t give any other woman the kind of respect he gave to her. They chased him. They conformed to his image. They did everything in their power to stay in his good graces. He knew she had feelings for him, but like his feelings for her, it was complicated and not so easy to define.
Like the first time he held her in his arms. It had been some eight years after she fancied herself a getaway driver and nearly got her ass caught. He had her in his grasp then, but allowed her to slip away. Then they met again, eight years later, at her husband’s dinner party.
Bulldog Valtone was a real estate mogul and a high-dollar donor by then, and was a citizen that politicians loved. Not because he was a man of convictions, too, but because he was willing to put his millions to work for convictions they believed in. Every year Bulldog held a dinner party at his massive estate in honor of many of those politicians, and he never failed, by night’s end, to write a few chosen ones a hefty check.
He also was somebody the government considered an asset. He provided them intel on South American gangs in exchange for their blind eye on his various illegalities that they knew of. If he ever overdid it, they were supposed to reign him in. But as far as Amelia knew, that reign-in never happened.
She also knew, like all of his previous dinner parties, that she would be required to do as she was taught: work the crowd of politicians who bowed and scraped to be one of the ones to get one of those checks, and to work it as if she was a politician herself. Not because she was going to convince her husband to support this candidate or that one. He’d already made up his mind before the soiree even began. But because he wanted her on display. He wanted those big-bellied, pink-faced men to see what a refined woman he married. He wanted them to want her. And those who wanted her so badly they were willing to ask, he was always willing to give. She wasn’t a prostitute. She wasn’t even a high-class whore. Because he gave her to them for free. He was crazy. She didn’t care how many man-of-the-year awards he won.
Bulldog had hoped that at least the Vice President would attend the big bash, given the amount of money he had given to their last campaign, but it didn’t happen. The highest member of the president’s administration to attend was the assistant director of the CIA. When Bulldog found out, he and Amelia were still upstairs, ready to head downstairs. And Bulldog was pissed.
“Not the director,” he said to Amelia as he pulled up the surveillance cameras on the partygoers downstairs. “But the assistant director! Some clown I’ve never even heard of or met before or wouldn’t know if he bit me in the face! That’s how little they think of me. I give and I give and I give. But that’s how little they think of me. See if they get a dime next time. They won’t get a dime next time!”
It didn’t matter to Amelia either way, and she knew to stay out of it. She turned her attention to the surveillance monitor. “Which one is our mark?” she asked.
Bulldog exhaled. He wanted to complain more; it was his nature to complain about everything. But he knew when to move on, too. He looked at the monitor and searched the crowd until he spotted the guy. “That one over by the fireplace. The big guy in the tan suit.”
“What’s his drug of choice?” Amelia asked.
“Smack,” Bulldog said. “And he moves plenty of it. He’s got dealers to supply, and customers to satisfy. Gets most of his stash from El Salvador, but those guys are getting expensive. That’s where I come in at. That’s why tonight we make our move. I’m going to be his supplier, and you’re going to make it happen.”
Amelia knew what that meant: charm and sex.
“But don’t come on too strong,” Bulldog warned her. “Keep your distance until he’s gotten a few drinks in him. I’ll let you know wh
en to move. Then you go to him, plaster on that gorgeous smile, and escort him to the room. Just like I taught your ass. By the time he comes out, we’d better have ourselves a deal.”
Or else, Bulldog could have added, but both of them knew he didn’t have to. Amelia had been with him long enough to already know what else.
When they finished dressing and made it downstairs, the sadistic man she knew disappeared, and the man the public knew and loved emerged. And he was smiling and backslapping and mingling like the beloved businessman, and high-dollar donor, they knew him to be.
“Fred! Mike!” he declared as soon as they made it downstairs. “Glad you could come!”
And Amelia mingled, too, like the dutiful wife she was known, publicly, to be.
But the hot topic of conversation wasn’t her husband, nor the other minor celebrity politicians in the room, nor the man who was her mark, but the very assistant director her husband had earlier disparaged.
“Did you see the size of that bundle between those thick thighs?” one of the ladies asked as Amelia joined their group.
“Not really, no,” Amelia said with a polite smile as a waiter handed her a drink.
“That’s why they call him Hammer, you know,” said another lady in their circle.
“Why’s that?” asked a third one. “Why do they call him Hammer?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, Hyacinth, or I would not have asked.”
“Because his Johnson is as big as one.”
Hyacinth smiled. The other lady was astonished. “No way!” she said.
“Yes, way,” Hyacinth said. “And I still have the scars to prove it!”
The ladies laughed. It was an old joke. Amelia smiled, but inwardly dismissed them as cackling biddies looking for something to hang their delusions on. Until she saw who this Hammer person was.
Amelia Sinatra: Hammer Time Page 4