“Hi, Sabrina,” I said. I tried to make eye contact, but she wouldn’t look at me. I guess that answered the question about the “ex.”
“Good-bye, Jimmy,” she replied and pushed her way past me into the hallway, slamming the door and leaving me alone in the room. Seconds later I heard McDaniel’s voice. I didn’t have to try to overhear. I’m a vampire; super-hearing is just part of my life.
“No way, Lieutenant. I’m done with that bloodsucking bastard and all this crazy shit. You saw what he did to the SWAT team last week. Hell, what he did to you. He has no regard for human life or well-being, and I do not trust him. Especially if the reports we’re hearing about him taking over Tiram’s seat are true.”
“That is exactly why I want him in here, Detective,” McDaniel said. “He’s dangerous and unpredictable, but we’re better off with him dangerous, unpredictable, and ours, rather than working with somebody else. I need you on this one, Law. The politics are delicate, and Black’s big mouth is more trouble than his fangs have ever been. All I need is him to crack one stupid joke at the wrong time for this whole thing to fall apart.”
I was a little offended. Then had to admit to myself that McDaniel was right. I do have a tendency to only open my mouth to change feet, and I’ve spent a lot of the last few months letting Greg and Sabrina do the talking while I do the punching and shooting. With neither of them around to watch my mouth for me, I was probably going to need a minder.
“Let Nester babysit,” Sabrina said. “He likes Black, and after the kidnapping case when Nester made detective, he actually feels indebted to the son of a bitch.”
“Fine,” McDaniel said. “I’ll put Nester on this assignment, but you owe me, young lady.”
“Yes, sir.”
I listened as her feet clomp-clomped away down the hallway. I heard McDaniel take a deep breath then open the door. He took the chair opposite me, and Nester came in and stood by the door, looking at me like he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to want this gig or not.
“Gee, Lieutenant, that was exciting. What’s next? You gonna arm wrestle detectives for the privilege of working with me? Loser gets stuck with me, of course,” I said, pulling out a chair from the table and sitting down. I propped my feet up on the table and laced my fingers behind my head. “Now, what’s the case? Must be pretty spicy for you to call me.”
McDaniel walked over to the table and swatted my feet onto the floor. He leaned down and put a finger in my face. “Look here, Black. I don’t want to deal with you any more than you want to deal with me. I’m pretty sure I’ll forgive you as soon as all my bruises fade, but we’re not there quite yet. In the meantime, there’s something going on with this case, and I need you to help me close it. Fast.”
“Is this the part where I apologize for kicking your ass or the part where I remind you that you were mojo’d into trying to kill me by an evil vampire, and I not only didn’t kill you, I didn’t do any permanent damage. And I haven’t tried to put the whammy on you or anyone in your department since I took over Tiram’s gig. I’m not saying you should be grateful to me for anything, but I am saying that I don’t owe you a damn thing, and if you want my help, you might want to stop talking to me like I’m something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe.” I never raised my voice, never got out of my chair, just leaned forward and looked McDaniel in the eye. I could tell from the look on his face that he got it.
McDaniel sat down opposite me again and slid a blank folder across the table. Nester took the chair to my right, and I opened the file. The first thing I saw was a picture of a pretty teenaged girl. She had long brown hair, an orthodontically perfect smile, hazel eyes, peaches-and-cream complexion, and a gold cross on a chain around her neck. The photo was a standard school photo, taken at some private school with a navy sweater as part of its uniform. The school logo was cut off in the picture, but I could see some piece of a Latin motto.
The next photo was a printout of a cell-phone picture, and it was the same girl in different circumstances. She was wearing the same sweater, along with a skirt and black tights. She was in her stocking feet, and her hair was mussed, like she’d been in a fight, and her lip was split. She wore a fierce expression and dirt on her knuckles. I revised my earlier impression—she had definitely been in a fight. She held a copy of today’s newspaper and a TV in the corner of the frame showed this morning’s CNN.
“A kidnapping?” I stared at McDaniel. “Isn’t this automatically kicked up to the feds?”
“Not this one. Not yet. I have the father’s cooperation as well as his reluctance to involve the federal authorities.”
“Oh, balls,” I groaned. “Who is it?”
“The girl is Cassandra Owen, only daughter of Marcus Owen, owner of Owen Imports, Owen Manufacturing, and several restaurants and nightclubs around town.”
“And the biggest, baddest mob boss North Carolina has ever seen,” I finished for him.
“Right now we are not discussing anything Mr. Owen may have been accused of in the past. We are treating him just like any other distraught parent.”
“And he’s right outside, isn’t he?” I focused my attention on the other side of the door and was able to distinguish two heartbeats standing still, waiting for McDaniel to call them in. “Go ahead, bring Owen and his lawyer in,” I said, waving my hand at the door.
McDaniel opened the door, and in walked a man with a sense of presence like nothing I’d ever experienced. He did nothing out of the ordinary, but from the second he stepped through the door, the room was his. Marcus Owen stood around six feet tall, probably a little over two hundred pounds, but he moved with the grace of a much smaller man. His brown hair was cut short, but professionally. No flyaway for this guy. He wore a pin-striped suit with a vest and watch fob. An honest-to-God, no-bullshit watch fob in today’s world. I’ll admit it: I was impressed.
Owen walked into the room and looked around like he was surveying an empire. This wasn’t a man who demanded respect, or anything else. This was just a man who you respected. He moved with the quiet self-assurance of someone who knew exactly who he was and what his place in the world was. Everything about him was confident and collected, without a hint of the emotional turmoil he must have felt. This guy had his shit together, and I felt even less impressive than normal in comparison. I sat up a little straighter in my chair, like a kid about to meet with the principal.
Owen’s hazel eyes missed nothing, taking in McDaniel, Nester, the case file on the table, and settling on me. I could tell I wasn’t exactly what he was expecting from whatever McDaniel told him I was, probably a “consultant,” since that’s what they put on my checks. I was in my usual outfit of clean-ish jeans, a blue Mary Janes band T-shirt, and a long-sleeve black overshirt. Owen came in and stood across the table from me.
“Are you the man who’s going to get my little girl back?” With that question, everything changed. He wasn’t the crime boss who could order people disappeared with the snap of his fingers. He wasn’t the drug kingpin with ties to every major street gang in the city. He wasn’t the murderer, extortionist, blackmailer, money launderer, and evil mastermind he was painted to be. In that moment, he was a father whose little girl was missing, and he was asking me to help with his heart in his eyes. There was the turmoil I was looking for, the humanity behind the crime boss. This guy was a terrified father. This guy I could help.
I motioned to the chair in front of him. The second heartbeat was a lawyer with a thousand-dollar briefcase and two-thousand-dollar suit. He pulled out his boss’s chair, and Owen sat. I sat across from him, with Nester at my elbow, a yellow legal pad at the ready. The lawyer took a spot next to Owen, and McDaniel sat at the end of the table.
I turned to McDaniel and pointed at the cameras in the corners of the room, up by the ceiling. “Lieutenant, I need your word that those cameras are turned off and there are no other recording devices or listening devices in this room. For me to do my job, Mr. Owen must feel completely comforta
ble with me, and our conversations may stray into some areas that he wouldn’t normally discuss in your presence.”
“I assure you, Mr. Black, we are all here for the same reason—to get Mr. Owen’s daughter back,” McDaniel said, and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, he sounded so innocent.
“That’s not what I said, Lieutenant,” I pointed out.
“There will be no recordings of anything said in this room,” McDaniel assured me with a glower.
“I like you,” Owen said. “You got balls. Now how you gonna get my Cassie back?”
“First, you’re going to give me a list of everyone who wants to hurt you. Then we’re gonna cross off all the ones that are too scared of you to try this. Then we’ll cross off the ones that are too small-time to even think about something like this. That should leave us with a pretty short list.”
“And what do you do with the people on your list?” Owen asked.
“I ask them all very nicely if they have Cassie. When I find the person who has her, I ask them nicely to let me take her home. Then they do that.”
“And what if you ask nicely and they don’t respond politely?” Owen leaned forward, his elbow on the table and his fingers steepled under his chin.
“Then I have to ask them in a less than nice manner. People don’t refuse when I insist,” I said.
Owen laughed and leaned back in his chair. “You don’t look like much, Black, but if you managed to edge out Gordon Tiram, then you must have something going for you that I can’t see. And honestly, I don’t care how you do it, I just want my little girl back.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Owen,” I said, opening the file.
He nodded. “Of course you will. That’s why Perkins here will be with you every step of the way.” He gestured toward the lawyer.
“No, thank you,” I said politely.
“I wasn’t asking,” Owen said, and this time I heard the steel in his voice that probably had grown men wetting themselves at the sound. I was way past being smart enough to scare.
I stood up and walked to the door. Owen stood up, too. “Where you going?” he asked.
“I’m going home,” I replied. “I don’t work with threats or with bullies, Mr. Owen. If you want my help, we’ll work together. If you want to bully somebody, bully your lawyer. He’s getting paid enough to take it.”
“Wait,” Owen said, reaching for my arm. I caught his forearm and let him feel the strength that he was playing with. I didn’t pour it on or anything, just let him know that I was a lot stronger than I looked, and that he wasn’t going to be able to force me to do anything.
Owen looked up at me, and I felt like he really looked at me for the first time. He looked beneath the ratty T-shirt and jeans, beneath the goofy hair, and looked at me like an equal. “I’m sorry,” he said, releasing my arm. His whole tone was different. He was no longer the bigshot crime boss used to having everyone jump at his every whim. Now he was just a dad with a missing daughter, who would do absolutely anything to get her back. “Please help me.”
I went back to my chair and sat down. I opened the file and looked at Owen. “Now, let’s get to work.”
Chapter 3
OVER THE NEXT hour, a few things became apparent to me. First, Marcus Owen loved his daughter fiercely, with the kind of love that a single parent of an only child has. It also became very apparent that Marcus Owen knew absolutely nothing about his daughter.
“What clubs did she belong to at school?” I asked.
“I dunno,” Owen replied. “None, I guess.” Then his attorney handed me a list of extra-curriculars a page and a half long, everything from Students Against Drunk Driving to volunteering at a soup kitchen two nights every week.
I flipped open the file to the second photo, the printed cell-phone photo. “Mr. Owen, this is what we call proof of life. It shows that Cassie was alive this morning when they arrived at wherever they’re keeping her.”
“Yeah, I know all about proof of life,” Owen said.
“I suppose you do,” I said. “When did you discover Cassie was missing?” I asked.
“When the ransom note showed up.”
“Nothing before then?” I raised an eyebrow.
“She went off to school while I was eating breakfast,” the crime boss said. “Then I had a morning meeting at one of my offices, and it wasn’t until the school called that I thought something might be up.”
“The school called you personally?” Nester asked.
“Yeah,” Owen replied. “It wasn’t like Cassie to be late, or to cut school, so when she wasn’t there by first block, the school called. When you pay what we pay for a first-rate education, you expect those kinds of things. I called the house, but nobody there knew anything. When I walked out to my car, I found that picture taped to my windshield. Then the call came in.”
“What did the kidnappers say?” I asked.
“They said they’d get back in touch with ransom demands, but to know that they had Cassie, and she was safe as long as I followed directions. They said no cops, no feds, or they’d . . .” Owen took a moment to compose himself.
“Mr. Owen, I don’t mean to be a smartass, but if they said no police, why was your first call to Lieutenant McDaniel?”
Owen looked at the lieutenant. McDaniel nodded, and Owen turned back to me. “I met Lieutenant McDaniel through a mutual acquaintance, with whom I share some business interests, if you get what I mean.”
I got exactly what he meant. “Gordon Tiram.”
“Yeah, Tiram.”
“So you called Tiram to get in touch with McDaniel and found out that Tiram came down with a terminal case of being dead.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t too happy about that, by the way. Tiram and I had come to an agreement a while back about how best to take care of Charlotte, and I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with an amateur.”
“But you figured anybody who could take out Tiram could probably handle your kidnappers,” I said.
“Not really. More like I figured if Tiram was gone, this might be a good time to hire McDaniel. He didn’t go for it, so I asked him to set up a meet with Tiram’s replacement.” My opinion of McDaniel went up a notch or two. Maybe he really had only been working with Tiram because of the compulsion, and we could do some good in this city. Once we finished working together to rescue the mob boss’s daughter, of course.
“And now here we are,” I said, gesturing to the glamorous surroundings of the police department conference room. At least we weren’t in one of the interrogation rooms. Sorry, interview rooms.
“Yeah, here we are,” Owen said. “Now what are we gonna do to get my little girl back?”
I opened my mouth, and before I could get the right platitudes out, my phone rang. I looked down at the display—Law—and pressed Accept. As I walked to the door, I said to Nester, “Get the rest of Mr. Owen’s statement, but I really need his list of enemies, anyone who might have a grudge and be willing to hurt a little girl to get revenge.” I thought for a second and said, “You might need an extra notebook.”
I stepped out into the hall and brought the phone to my ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw McDaniel come through the door behind me, his phone out and his face grim.
“What’s up, Sabrina? I thought you didn’t want to deal with me.”
“I don’t,” she said, her disdain crystal-clear thanks to the wonders of high-quality cell service. “But there’s a problem at Legend.”
“What kind of problem? Not another boggart?” Legend was a dance club in the middle of the newly designated “Uptown Entertainment District.”
“I wish it were something that subtle,” Law said. “There’s a vampire on the dance floor—”
“I really need a punchline right now,” I interjected.
“What you need is to shut your mouth and haul ass over there. So far most of the crowd thinks it’s some kind of super-kinky floor show or an ad for Purgatory, but that won’t last long.”
�
�I’m on the way. Can you call Abby and have her meet us there?”
“I’m not going,” Sabrina said.
“What? Why not?”
“Jimmy, when I said I was through with all your paranormal BS, I meant it. I’m a cop, not a superhero. And I’m not even sure what you are anymore. You aren’t the guy I knew, and as long as you keep playing at being some kind of über-vampire, you’re nobody I can be around. I’m sorry, Jimmy, you’re on your own with this one.” She clicked off, and I looked up. McDaniel stood in the hallway, watching me.
“Was that Law?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Something about a rogue vampire at Legend. I should probably take this one. You and Nester get the rest of Owen’s information, and I’ll circle back to you after I’ve dealt with this.”
“Sounds like a plan,” McDaniel said. “Good luck.” He turned to go back into the conference room.
“Thanks,” I said. I hit the speed dial on my phone for Abby as I started down the hall for the front door. The phone rang once, then she picked up.
“Yeah?” Abby answered.
“I need another pair of hands on a case downtown.”
“Uptown,” she corrected me.
“Whatever,” I said. “Meet me at Legend as fast as you can get there.”
“No can do, boss,” Abby said. “I just got back, and your new buddy William has me up to my neck in Post-it Notes, birthdates, calendars, and appointment books trying to track down Tiram’s account numbers and crack his computer passwords. Why couldn’t this guy just have changed the ‘o’ in password to a zero like everybody else? Anyway, unless you want to start a new career waiting tables to fund your criminal empire, you need me to stay right here. You’re on your own tonight, boss. Sorry.” She clicked off as I stepped through the double doors and out onto the sidewalk. I looked around, remembering that Legend was only a few blocks away, so I decided to run it instead of trying to grab a cop car.
Legend was a warehouse converted to a dance club in the ’90s, when there was no nightlife in Uptown Charlotte, rent on buildings was super-cheap, and getting a crowd into this part of town was like selling ice cream in Alaska. But with one of the city’s hottest DJs spinning, Legend quickly became the place to be on Friday and Saturday nights. Twenty years later, a half dozen competing clubs had come and gone, but Legend remained the king of Charlotte nightlife.
The Black Knight Chronicles (Book 6): Man in Black Page 2