Two guys were going up the stairs and two down. I guessed they discovered Blanc was not in his room and split up to locate him. I told Blake to be ready because she had two men headed her way and I ran for the stairs.
I figured the gunsels had to know the jig was up when they found their targets weren’t where they were supposed to be, but they split up to find them which meant they were determined. They had to move fast before someone showed up to stop them, which meant they might get sloppy. I hoped to use that to my advantage, but if I was wrong things might get ugly.
I went into the stairwell with my .45 in hand. I had ditched the blaster I used in the alley somewhere along the way. I went up the stairs to the second floor and peeked out of the window into the hall.
I saw nothing, so I quietly slid the door into its wall pocket to the left. A quick peek down the hall to the right showed me I was on the backside of a pair of gunsels, ten meters away from my position.
The lead guy was opening a door. I didn’t know the layout well enough to know what room they were moving into, but I quickly learned it was 2-F when the lead man recoiled as Blake’s needler stung him in the face.
He grunted in pain and staggered backwards into the opposite wall as his companion fired a blaster bolt into the door.
I slid out into the hall far enough to get a clear shot and fired at the second man. Two rounds hit him in the torso. He staggered and dropped to his knees as the gunsel with the needles in his face turned to fire at me.
I fired two rounds into his chest and he fell onto his side with a faint cry, kicking his legs in pain.
The guy on his knees fired another blaster bolt into the wall near the door to 2-F.
I fired another pair of rounds at him and he slumped to the floor.
I released the magazine that was loaded into my pistol and swapped it out for a fresh one. I could hear footsteps coming down the stairwell. I didn’t want to get caught in the doorway so I moved down the hall toward 2-F after sliding the door closed. They’d have to go through me to get to their targets.
I tried the first door on my right and found it unlocked, so I moved into the doorway and covered the hall in case the other two would-be assassins exited the stairwell.
The stairway door opened and I could see a masked head and blaster easing slowly out of the doorway. He saw me at nearly the same time and yelled, “Lookout!” as he tried to bring his weapon to bear around the door opening. He didn’t stand a chance. I fired one round that punched a hole in his head and he fell facedown onto the floor.
I assumed the second man fled because he never showed. I covered the door for a minute or so, and when nobody else tried to come through I backpedaled toward 2-F.
“Blake? Is everybody all right in there?” I yelled from the hallway.
“Rick? Yes, we’re okay.”
“We have three down out here and at least one runner,” I said as I slid over to see if the two downed gunsels showed any signs of life. They looked like I felt.
Dr. Bryant came out and checked the men as well. He looked at me and shook his head before he went to the guy by the stairwell door. I didn’t know if he was showing disapproval of my choice of weapon or merely indicating the men were dead.
Blake stepped out in the hall and saw the carnage, her face ashen. “I thought we were done for,” she said. Her voice and hands were shaky.
“You did fine, Blake. Something a little more potent than a needler would have been better, but you did fine.”
“Fine? Look at me. My hands are shaking,” she said holding her hands up in front of her.
I laughed. “It’s commonly called adrenaline dump. Your system winds up for a fight then it has to come down. You’re fine.”
I wish I could have said the same thing. I think I pushed myself a little too far and too hard and those chickens were coming home to crap all over me. The last thing I remember before I went out was a couple of uniformed cops running down the hall and Blake saying something about me not looking very well.
When I came to, I was looking up at a white tiled ceiling.
Fudge Labelle’s mug appeared in my view squinting down at me.
“Shit, I ended up in hell?” I said.
“He’s conscious Doctor Bryant,” Labelle said looking to his right.
“I thought I told you to take it easy,” Bryant quipped as he leaned over me.
“Yeah, but I heard you were playing hero and wanted to see it for myself,” I replied.
The doctor laughed. “How do you feel?”
“Better than expected. How long have I been out?”
“A couple of hours, but most of that was induced. I needed to treat you.”
“I take it I’ll live?”
“You won’t if you can’t stay out of fights for awhile.”
“No promises, but I’ll try, Doc. Anybody else get hurt? I saw a nurse on the floor on the security cams.”
“They put her lights out,” Labelle said.
“She will be fine,” Bryant said.
“Can he answer questions?” Labelle asked.
“If he feels up to it,” the doctor said.
“What about it, tough guy?” Labelle said looking at me.
“You want to ask me questions here? Tonight?”
“It’s better this way, trust me.”
Normally this would be done at the police station, but if this got the cops off my back sooner, then I was game. “Ask,” I said as the doctor raised the bed until I was sitting up.
“Where were you before you called Detective Blake?”
“The Red Light, near Lacey’s. Where the hell were you?”
“Home with my kids. What were you doing over by the West Bridge earlier this evening?”
“The West Bridge? Nothing, because I wasn’t there. A guy has to be there to do something there. Unless you paid somebody to say that, then it’s the truth, right?” I said with a little anger.
“I don’t pay for witnesses,” Labelle replied with a little anger of his own.
I toned it down. “Sorry, Fudge. I’m used to local cops.”
“Ain’t nothin’. I get it, Johnson. What were you doing near Lacey’s? That’s a club, right?”
“Right,” I said. “Looking out for some friends. Henry Bartram was in there and they were worried about him causing trouble. Your investigation has him in the news, in case you didn’t notice. I had a bartender named Teddy get him to leave and I tried to follow him, but I lost him in the crowd on the street. There’s a lot of people out that time of night. I wanted to make sure he didn’t come back.”
“You lost him?”
“That’s what I said.”
“What did you do when you lost him?”
“I started back toward Lacey’s. I was going to watch the entrance to the club and see if Bartram returned. On my way there, I get a call. A guy tells me about Bartram setting up an assassination attempt on your partner and Blanc. I called Blake and ran for my office.”
“A guy?”
“Yeah. A guy. You know, a man, a dude, male of the human race, XY chromosomes. I don’t know who he was. Not many people know my current number. Some friends and some cops, that’s about it. Might have been a cop with a conscience, he sounded like a badge. I couldn’t tell you who he is if I wanted to. There’s been rumors of a bump squad from out east in town for awhile, so I took it serious. Call Gene Dickerson, he thinks they link up to Bartram.”
“We know about that. You know, I could check your phone.”
“Sure you could, but you’d find jack and shit on there and jack didn’t leave a message.”
Labelle didn’t get it.
“It’s a burner phone, Fudge. You’ll have to get a warrant. You’ll have to sift through millions of phone records to find the call. Blake called me too, you won’t find her call on their either. There’s nothing on the phone itself,” I explained.
“I know you and Varuna talked, she told me. Why do you have a burner?” he asked.
<
br /> “Because whoever beat the shit out of me took my phone and scrip. They’re probably crank-calling celebrities and buying beer with my money. I haven’t bought a new one yet and I’ve been kind of busy. That’s why nobody knows my mobile number.”
Labelle shrugged, conceding the point. Not very good interrogation technique.
“Blake said you were in a cab.”
“That’s right.”
“When did that happen?”
“I knew a cab would get me to my building faster than running so I jumped in the first one I came across. Crazy Karl. Blanc left the keys to his sedan in my office the day he was shot, so I used that to get here.”
“So if I ask this Karl about this he’ll corroborate your story?”
I shook my head and smiled. “Karl couldn’t corroborate the time of day. You’re welcome to try. Talk to him. You’ll see.”
“Why didn’t you have Karl bring you here?”
I chuckled. “Take a ride with that crazy bastard and you’ll understand why. A ride with him is putting your life in the hands of a crazy person. I used Blanc’s car because the emergency beacons made for a faster trip. You going to charge me with illegal use of an emergency vehicle?”
“No.” He paused. “Henry Bartram was killed tonight,” he blurted out. That’s a cop trick to elicit a reaction. I think they learned it from cop dramas on the vid. It works in dramas and with the truly stupid, sometimes.
“Bartram’s dead?” I asked with what must have been a pleasantly surprised look on my face. “It would be a pretty neat trick for me to blow Bartram’s head off in the middle of a crowd and be able make it here and shoot it out with some gunsels considering the shape I’m in.”
“He wasn’t shot. Somebody tossed him off the Sky Riser over near the West Bridge.”
That was another sign Labelle wasn’t a very good interrogator. He should not have volunteered that kind of info.
I sighed. “I see. Even more unlikely for someone in my condition. Ask the doc. Are you sure he didn’t jump? He might have left a note,” I said with a smile. “Check his pockets. He wasn’t the smartest guy around, he may have missed the part where he was supposed to leave the note where it could be found.”
“That’s not funny, Johnson,” he said with a sour face.
“Was it you or Blake that said he’s going down this time,” I said laughing. “300 stories down.”
“I said that isn’t funny.”
I kept smiling. “Yes it is.”
He shifted gears. “What do you know about two thugs found in a Red Light alley stripped naked?”
“What two guys do in private is their own business.”
“They were dead, asshole. What do you know about that?”
“Not much, and I don’t care to. I like live women who like me. Necrophilia in an alley...” I trailed off with a look of distaste. Dr. Bryant repressed a laugh.
Labelle sighed loudly. “The two guys, did you shoot them?” Labelle asked. He was getting irritated with me, which was to my advantage.
“No. I didn’t shoot any dead bodies, naked or otherwise. Are you going to try and pin every damned thing that happened tonight on me? Any unsolved shoplifting cases? Reports of jaywalking? Look, I’m not the only guy that packs a .45 you know. Compare the bullets from those guys in the alley to the bullets in the three guys I plugged here.”
Labelle glanced at his notebook then up at me. “You own a blaster?”
“No. I like weapons that spit lead.”
He shifted gears again. “So you didn’t see Bartram after you lost him? You didn’t kill him?”
I grumbled and glared at the ceiling. “Get this straight. Yes, I saw Bartram tonight,” I said angrily. “He was alive the last I saw him. I did not throw him off the Sky Riser, as much as I might have liked to.”
Labelle looked at me for several seconds, then he sighed. “You’re okay, Johnson. You got some mouth, though. I think you’re clean. Thanks for looking out for Blake.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. He bought all of it. If I had been thinking more clearly I might have sold him the West Bridge while I was at it.
Labelle left the room with an “I hope you feel better in the morning.”
“You need rest,” Dr. Bryant said. “Sleep. Buzz for the nurse if you need anything.”
He turned the light down and left.
I closed my eyes and smiled. I didn’t lose a second of sleep over the demise of Henry Bartram, and as long as I didn’t talk about it in my sleep I wasn’t worried about dealing with a murder investigation.
Technically I wasn’t lying about Bartram. I didn’t know the fate of the fat man. I slugged him and he went down, over the edge of the Sky Riser. I didn’t look over to see what happened. He might have lived for all I knew. Hell, that might have been the day that pigs could fly. It turned out it wasn’t.
~~~:{o}:~~~
Chapter 10
on the QT News Service - Local, Midtown, Sky Riser, High Town
Late Night Plunge for Midtown Police Detective
Sometime in the dark hours of the night, somebody found a bloody pile of clothes and meat that probably reeked of cheap booze and pulverized pork down on Foundation Level. According to sources within the Gulf City Police Department, the sorry bastard decided to take the express route down from High Town. The pile of meat used to be a cop named Bartram who worked Midtown District 2.
Police work is tough, and sometimes it’s too much for one man to deal with. Last night must have been one of those times for Sergeant Bartram. Pressures of the job, stress from a suspension and an Internal Affairs investigation, and the influence of alcohol can lead to bad decisions. The question is: did he book the 300-story trip himself, or did he have a travel agent? Does anyone give a damn? A sad end for a brave public servant. We are sure Bartram will be missed terribly.
on the QT News Service - Local, High Town
Wild Night in High Town Leaves 5 Dead in Shootouts
Five men were gunned down in two separate, but likely connected, incidents.
In the Red Light, a pair of men with blaster wounds were found dead and stripped naked in a dark alley near The Cog, while a shootout with police left another three men dead in Bagwell Medical Center.
The connection? on the QT has been told by a confidential source that all five dead men were connected with the O’Hara gang out of New Boston, Federation of North Virginia.
What were they doing in Gulf City? Word on the street is they were members of a blaster squad brought in to bump off a few unfortunates, but they obviously didn’t fare so well. Perhaps life moves a little too quickly in our fair town for their dastardly sort.
on the QT - We hear it on the QuieT, but tell it loud.
---o---
The next morning found me feeling sore and stiff, but it was the best I had felt since before Rex worked me over.
The doctor working that morning told me to go home and rest. I didn’t tell him how unlikely it was that I would be able to do that.
As I cleaned up in the bathroom, I saw my looks were much improved. I was nearly back to my usual dour and ugly self.
Blake showed up to give me a ride back to my office.
“Your turn to question me about what I did last night?” I asked as we walked to her car.
“No. Fudge said he grilled you thoroughly after you came to. He really should have waited until you were able to go to the police station, but what is done is done. He told me he gave you the third degree, but he says you’re straight. That’s good enough for me. Fudge can be intimidating. Sorry if it was a little harsh.”
The third degree she said. I had been on the receiving end of the third degree and what Fudge brought wasn’t it.
I wondered if maybe Fudge didn’t know what the third degree was, but I doubted that was the case. Could be he just told Blake that to get the case stamped CLOSED so they could move on. Maybe he suspected my involvement in Bartram’s death and was willing to overlook it if my stor
y was tight enough. Who was going to give a damn about a couple of eastern mobsters shot dead in an alley and a corrupt cop who hit the deck at terminal velocity. Not me, not Fudge, not anybody. Maybe Fudge figured I did society a favor so he did me one.
“He was tough, but I guess he had his reasons.” I shrugged. “So Bartram really is dead?”
“Yes. I really wanted to bring him down. He was done for. I think he knew that. The GCPD brass will review the case, but it’s finished. Bartram got off easy.”
“Are you and Labelle going to stay in High Town for awhile?”
“Today, maybe tomorrow. Weaver doesn’t need us here, so as soon as we tie up some loose ends we go back to the Spire, and back to normal IA duties.”
To get to Blake’s car we had to walk around a small gathering of Security Forces personnel led by the new commander of the space elevator security contingent. He looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place him.
We climbed in the sedan and she drove manually.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked. She didn’t look at me when she spoke, keeping her eyes on the road. Smart.
“Probably try to heal up and then it’ll be the same old shit, just different days.”
“You should be a cop, Rick.”
“And just when I thought we were getting along you gotta go and insult me.”
She laughed. “I see why Gene thinks so highly of you. You don’t quit, do you?”
“That’s a polite way of saying I’m stubborn. It goes with being a dimwit.”
“Have it your way. Thanks for last night, by the way.”
“You make it sound like we were on a date. I wasn’t doing anything else,” I said with a smirk. “Besides, if those assholes got you and Blanc they would have killed two of the few decent cops I know.”
“I thought they were going to get us. When that assassin opened the door and I shot him... I don’t know what I thought. I have never fired my sidearm in the line of duty before last night.”
“Get yourself a blaster and you can make guys like that see sense. A blaster bolt instead of needles would have done him in. As it was, you hit him. Most cops would have missed. Like I said, you did fine.”
The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Page 17