by Linda Ladd
“Yeah, I figured that. Hang on while I tape him up, and then we’ll take care of that wound.”
“Well, hurry it up, Novak. I’m bleeding to death.”
That was hyperbole. Novak moved up behind the man facing the wall and clubbed him in the back of the head with his gun butt. The guy crumbled to the ground.
Lori scoffed. “Well, I guess that’s one way. I thought I’d question him first, but that’s out now.”
“I can wake him up if I want to talk.” Novak tore off some tape and secured the man’s wrists and ankles and mouth. He squatted down beside her again. “Can you stand up?”
“A little help wouldn’t hurt.”
Novak supported her upstairs to the hall bathroom, found gauze and tape in the cabinet, and cleaned her up as best he could. The wound looked bad; it needed to be sutured again. Lori was pretending it was nothing, but that was an act. A recent surgery incision torn asunder was no scratch and couldn’t be taken lightly.
“Take it easy for once and just keep an eye on the girls while I go introduce myself to that guy. Chances are nobody else will show up any time soon. They must do this in shifts.”
“They told me these two guys bring them food every night. They said they keep them here to—get this, Novak—to accommodate Stephen’s needs. That makes me sick to my stomach. He likes to slap them around, too. They said the guards aren’t much better. They’re using them as personal sex slaves.”
Novak didn’t answer, but he didn’t like anything she’d said. In fact, it made him livid. He left her propped on the bed pillows with the girls gathered around her, all thanking her and trying to make her more comfortable. They were really young kids. He went back downstairs, dragged the two men into the kitchen, and gathered up the spilled food and took it upstairs to the girls. They grabbed the food as if they hadn’t eaten in days. “Okay, I’m gonna have a little chat with the guy who knocked you up against that wall. Wait here.”
“Aw, you’re such a sweetheart, Novak, but don’t kill him. We’re all civilized at the moment.”
“I’m not going to kill him. Frank might, though. Would you stop him?”
“Nope, I wouldn’t.”
Minutes later, Novak was back in the kitchen. He checked their IDs and found them to be residents of Galveston. From Judge Locke’s personal goon army, all right, provided with their own little prison condo in which to exploit innocent young women. He didn’t feel sorry for them. He checked outside for movement, front and back, found all quiet and dark. Then he went into the downstairs bathroom and filled the tub with cold water. After that, he sat down at the kitchen table and drank a bottle of water.
The guy Novak put down was the one who’d slapped the girl around the day before. He was covered with vulgar tattoos and body hair. He smelled bad, and his hair was greasy. After a while, he woke up slowly, twitching and moaning under the tape. It took a couple of minutes for him to open his eyes and get his bearings. That’s when he remembered Novak. After that, he panicked and tried to wriggle out of his bindings, but Novak kicked him over onto his back and stomped him once in his gut. The guy wheezed under his taped mouth and sucked in air through his nose. Novak squatted down beside him. “Okay, here’s what’s going to happen now. I’m gonna ask you some questions and you’re gonna answer them. That’s simple enough, isn’t it? Do you understand me?”
The guy growled something unintelligible; it didn’t sound the least bit friendly. Novak slugged him hard on the temple, dragged him to the bathroom, and hoisted him bodily into the tub. It revived the guy right off.
Novak ripped the tape off his mouth. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’m going to hold your head under until you’re ready to tell me what I want to know. Let me know when you decide to talk.”
Novak pushed him down and held him under for a while. When he started thrashing around in earnest, Novak grabbed his hair and brought his head up. “Ready to talk?”
The guy spit out water followed by some really unpleasant suggestions as to what Novak could do to himself. Novak plunged him back under and left him there until he went into a complete leg-kicking panic. Novak happened to know precisely how long it took to drown someone in a bathtub, and the guy wasn’t even to his limit yet. He pulled him back up. It only took three more dunks to loosen his tongue.
The guy came up coughing and strangling. “Stephen’ll kill me if I tell you anything! He’s crazy. He’ll kill me!”
“Yeah, I figured that out all by myself. Where are you taking these little girls?”
The guy cast his eyes around for help that wasn’t there, but he didn’t answer Novak’s question.
Novak thrust him under again. He held him longer this time.
Unsurprisingly, the guy came out talkative. He let him gulp in some air. “Some guy, they call him the Turk, he’s supposed to come by and pick them up.”
“When?”
“Two days.”
“I’m looking for a girl, thirteen years old. Name is Lucy Caloroso. Red curly hair, blue eyes, probably gave you more trouble than you could handle.”
His eyes reacted to the name. He knew Lucy, all right. He shook his head as if he didn’t. Novak grabbed a handful of hair again, and the man cooperated quickly enough.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. Just stop it.” Panting, he heaved in deep sucking breaths, and Novak put up with it for less than a minute. He moved to push his head under again, and the guy’s answer came in rasping, halting words. “All I know...is she’s somebody special. Judge says...he’s got something in mind, don’t know what, I swear...I don’t know what. I just do what I’m told, man. Maybe the judge wants her for his own, I don’t know, I swear to God.” He was getting his breath back now. Novak let go of his hair. “Stephen brought her out here from Galveston, that’s all I know.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t know. He took her off somewhere alone, just the two of them. I don’t know where he took her, I’m tellin’ you I don’t know.”
“Think harder. I need answers.”
The guy tried to calm down, didn’t manage it so well. “He drove her out here himself. Only time he’s ever done that.” Breathless, wet hair stringing down over his face, he started begging. “I don’t know where she is, I don’t know! One day we came in with the food and she was gone. Ask the girls upstairs, ask them, I don’t know nothin’ else, I swear, I swear on the Holy Virgin.”
Novak held him under some more, just to make sure he wasn’t holding back, but got nothing else out of him. He slapped duct tape back over his mouth and left him bound and struggling in the tub. He wouldn’t drown, but he couldn’t get out of that tub, either. He walked back over to Stephen Locke’s house. Frank had spent his time searching through the actor’s stuff. The master bedroom looked as if a windstorm had whirled through.
“Find anything we can use?”
“No. Those guys know where Lucy is?”
“No, but the one who can still talk said she’s special and they treated her that way. That’s good news. They want her alive and healthy, Frank, so she will be when we find her. We’re getting close now, I can feel it. He said Stephen took her somewhere, the guy said he didn’t know where they went or why.”
“You believe that?”
“I was really encouraging him to tell the truth.”
“So the Locke kid can tell me where she is?”
“He might, alongside some serious urging. It worked on that jerk next door.”
“I’m gonna get it out of him, then I’m going to kill him.”
Frank probably wouldn’t. He was prone to exaggeration when riled up so hard. Then again, he might go through with it.
“Well, get the info out of him that we need first before you do something you can’t undo.”
If Frank had enough self-control not to end the guy for good, Novak just might. It would be a ble
ssing to the world. His only mourners would be those spacey teenyboppers such as Motel Delilah and her equally obtuse besties. Now all they had to do was sit and wait for the cocky little actor punk to come along home.
Chapter 22
They waited for a long time. The Locke kid must be having a binge somewhere, perhaps for the last time. His death would not be a tragedy from which the world could not recover. Novak checked on Lori periodically and found her still propped up on the pillows with young girls around her and butterfly bandages patching her gunshot wound back together. She had two guns in her lap and her eyes fixed on the door. More hired guns were incoming sooner rather than later, and she knew it. So did Novak.
The frightened teens had already called their parents on Lori’s cell and were waiting for them to show up in Phoenix. All of them lived in the Midwest or down on the coast, so their arrivals wouldn’t be any time soon. So they watched Riverdale on TV and ate fast food and were surprisingly calm. Some slept, but no one cried any more. They had learned about survival under the worst conditions known to women since they’d been under Locke’s control. Lessons they would never be able to forget.
Novak rejoined Caloroso in Locke’s family room and ate the gourmet food in the fridge and watched his big-screen HD TV over the fireplace. Four o’clock in the morning rolled around before they heard the garage door go up at the front of the house. They looked at each other and then both got up and moved past the divider bookshelf into the living room. Spotless white furniture sat around invitingly, and a magnificent metal sculpture stood on a table, but Novak went into the back hallway where the kid would have to enter out of the garage. A utility room was built behind the garage door, so he stepped inside and waited. Frank pressed his back against the living room wall beside a white love seat that hid him from the hall. They both got ready, poised to move fast.
The door opened and then clicked shut. Novak burst out right behind him and hit him hard at the center of his spine. Stephen Locke yelled as he was shoved forward where he fell hard on his knees about two yards from the front door. That’s when Frank stepped out from behind the wall and met Locke with a brutal kick in his back that knocked him flat on his belly. The breath was knocked out of him, and Frank took a knee beside his head and placed his SIG Sauer tight against his right temple.
“Hello, big shot,” Frank muttered through his teeth. “Know what? You’re gonna die tonight. But first, you’re gonna tell me where my daughter is.”
The actor stared at Frank, still gasping for breath, but he managed to come up with what sounded like a line from his gangster script. “Go to hell, pig,” he spit out, all mean and tough-like. Dumb, dumb kid. Not so wise a move, not when it was Frank Caloroso you were dealing with. Lucy’s father was not in the mood for anything but shedding blood, but Stephen didn’t know that. He thought he was still in a movie where he got to beat the shit out of the extras.
“You first,” gritted out Frank. He straddled the guy and grabbed his throat with his left hand. He put the gun up close to Stephen’s face. “Open your fucking mouth.”
Stephen’s eyes bulged a bit, but he was used to calling the shots and having a stunt double take the hard blows. Maybe he was just too damn drunk to make good decisions. Maybe he was a stupid idiot. His bravado was not going to get it done this time. “You know who I am, asshole?” he decided to say next. “You know who my father is? He’s the guy who’s gonna flay your skin off inch by inch if you touch one hair on my head.”
Unceremoniously, Frank grabbed a hunk of said hair and jammed the gun barrel into Stephen Locke’s big mouth. He lifted up his forefinger and made sure Stephen watched him place it on the trigger. He gave it a little tug that didn’t quite fire the gun, but it came close enough to make Novak tense up. Time to stand down, buddy.
“Better hold up a bit, Frank. You want answers from this guy, don’t you?”
Frank’s hazel eyes looked cold, and calm as death. He pulled the gun out of Locke’s mouth. “Now, one last time. Where is my daughter?”
Locke began to see the light. He was now sweating profusely. “Who are you? I don’t know who you’re talking about. What daughter? Who?”
“I’m talking about Lucy Caloroso, you miserable excuse of a human being. You tell me where she is or you’re gonna die right here, right now, and in the worst way I can think of. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t know....”
For one heart-stopping instant, Novak believed that Frank was going to pull that trigger and blow the guy’s face off. But Frank had returned to his senses and tamped down some of the bloodlust, having always been a fairly reasonable man. Instead of shooting him, he brought the gun barrel down in a hard blow against the bridge of Locke’s nose. He, like Novak, had always found that extremely effective when forcing somebody to talk. Red mist exploded outward, followed by a gush of bright red blood that coated Frank’s face and hair and the front of his black T-shirt. Locke screamed in absolute agony, twisting and choking on the blood pouring down his throat. His nostrils and lips were all split wide open. That kind of wound was not so good for Locke’s pretty boy image. Frank held him down so tight to the floor that the kid couldn’t move a muscle. So the highly acclaimed action actor could only lie there immobile, strangling on his blood and struggling to breathe through his butchered nose.
Novak decided to intervene. “Believe me, Frank, I’m not trying to talk you out of anything, but I will say that maybe you shouldn’t kill him just yet. Give in to your frustration all you want. You know, give him some of what he likes to dole out to those poor girls next door. Mess up his pretty face some more, if you like, and crack those snowy white tooth implants, fine with me. But a dead man can’t tell us anything.”
Frank considered Novak’s advice, climbed off the guy, and wiped the blood off his face with the tail of his shirt. Then he got out a pair of leather gloves from his jacket pocket. He tugged them on, jerked Locke up to standing by the front of his wet and bloody shirt, doubled his fist, drew back his arm, and hit him square in his broken nose again and about as hard as Novak had ever seen a blow thrown. The force alone propelled Stephen backward onto that crisp white loveseat that didn’t stay white very long. His nose looked as if it was smashed to the bone, and blood ran down his throat into his collar. Now he was woozy and couldn’t stand up when Frank jerked him to his feet again. Frank held him up by his shirt.
“I saw you slap my girl in the face,” Frank ground out, down close to Locke’s face. “Like this.”
Frank didn’t seem capable of stopping once he started slapping Lucy’s abuser. Novak had to step in again, not because he wanted to but because enough was enough, even for an enraged father. “Let him catch his breath and answer your questions, Frank. You kill him and we’ve got zero idea where they’re stashing Lucy. He’s got to be able to talk. His mouth is already cut to ribbons.”
Frank stood up and stepped away from the weeping, gagging film star. “Not such a tough guy anymore, are you, you sniveling little bastard coward.”
Stephen rolled off the blood-spattered couch onto his hands and knees on the floor. Blood poured down onto the shiny hardwood floor. He attempted to crawl away.
Frank kicked him in the side hard enough to knock him onto his back. “Where’s Lucy?”
“I don’t know....”
Frank gave him another shot to the mouth, and that loosened his tongue, in more ways than one. Novak sat down on the matching white chair across the coffee table from their conversation, ready to step in if Frank got trigger-happy again. Stephen needed to live in an eight feet by eight feet jail cell for the final humiliation along with the destruction of his career, and that would happen as soon as his arrest hit the front page of Variety and every other Los Angeles newspaper. Novak could give them the scoop himself.
“She’s in L.A. I’m telling you the truth. She’s out there with Mickey. That’s where we take the go
od ones....”
Wrong thing to say, you dumbass, thought Novak.
“You little punk.” Frank grabbed him back up to sitting. “Who’s Mickey?”
“Mike Mickey, the famous producer. You’ve heard of him. Everybody knows who he is.” That came out garbled as he lolled his head around, still spitting out blood. “Head of Southern Skies Studios. He does my films. He’s got her. I sent her out there to him.”
“For what, you bastard?”
Locke’s eyes were not focusing anymore, his lower face pretty much ground beef. All he got out was “Virgin.”
Stephen Locke is suicidal, Novak thought.
Roaring with rage, Frank went at him again. Novak jumped up. He had to stop him or Frank was going to kill the guy. He didn’t have time to intervene. The big front door was kicked wide with a shattering of glass, and half a dozen Scottsdale police officers rushed into the room, service weapons drawn. Within seconds, the three of them were surrounded.
“Show us your hands! Now! Both of you!”
“Get on the floor, get down, now!”
Not stupid, Novak raised his hands high. Frank put his own bloody hands up, too, the SIG dangling off his thumb. Stephen Locke lay on the floor, sobbing and half-conscious.
The cops quickly got Frank down on the floor and disarmed and cuffed him.
Novak was polite. “I’ve got a .45 in a shoulder holster and a conceal carry permit in my wallet. So does my friend. We’re private investigators.” As Novak spoke, he went slowly down onto his knees, hands still up. One cop frisked him in expert fashion and retrieved his weapon. Then he pushed him down on his stomach beside the other two men. “My P.I. and C.C. licenses are in my wallet,” Novak told them again.