“Yeah,” I said, figuring I’d leave my run-for-the-border/immigration jokes for another time. Or unless I needed to light a fire under them. But then I could always call up Raul and ask him to come over. He’d know exactly what to say to light a fire under their asses.
Laurie told the honcho the apartment number, and we all started over to the building with them. Just then my beeper went off. I quickly checked to see if it was Olijede, but it was the number for the gym. I dialed my cell phone and got Chappie on the first ring.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I said.
“I called your house and got no answer. You supposed to be resting.”
“I am. I just had to get out of there for awhile.”
“You feel up to doing another interview?”
“Sure,” I said. “Who is it this time?”
“Outfit called Reel Sports.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Me neither. Supposed to be a new show on cable, or something. Called me at eight saying they wanted to set up an interview with us. I said okay, then they called me back a couple of minutes ago wantin’ to know if we was good to go this morning at ten sharp. Guess they doing a show on the sport of kick-boxing and was interested in making you their feature attraction. But this morning they only gonna be in town a short time.”
“Maybe they ought to wait till I win,” I said, laughing.
“Yeah, well, they backing it up. Offered to pay us a grand just for doing the interview before the fight.”
“For that kind of money I’ll even put on an exhibition for them.”
“No, you ain’t,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t even be letting you do this.”
“Chappie, I’ll be fine.” I glanced at my watch. Nine twenty-three. “See you at ten.”
When I turned to Laurie, she looked quizzical. I explained things and asked if she’d mind watching over the group of movers for an hour or two till I got back.
“Not at all,” she said. “You go ahead.”
“Okay,” I said, watching the amigos unload their dollies from the big truck. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry. I can take the Nissan back. I’ll be fine.” She leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss on my lips. “Honest.”
I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nerves, I thought. Just waiting for the big moment to arrive.
CHAPTER 32
I thought I was doing all right at first, getting to the gym by about two minutes to ten. I knew Chappie would be waiting, so I parked in a hurry on the backside of the building and began a hustling trot around to the front entrance. That’s when I saw my old buddy Red leaning along the side near the section of glass brick windows. I slowed my steps and scrutinized him. He was wearing a wine-colored leather coat that hung down over his waist, and a white scarf wrapped artfully around his neck with just the right length left dangling. Sort of like a hoodlum’s version of a male model. Looking right at me, he smiled. You wouldn’t really call it a smile, though. More of a smirk. The same kind of smirk that he’d had right before I’d kicked his ass that night in the hotel.
“Hey, Shade,” he said. Both of his hands were in his jacket pockets. The right one looked bulky. Like he was holding something.
I instinctively pulled my coat around and felt for my gun, which I wore in a pancake holster on my right hip.
“Suppose you just let me see your hands,” I said. “Nice and slow.”
“Sure,” he said, moving his arms with extended deliberation. He held up his open palms. “Satisfied?”
I did a quick glance around. No one else seemed to be with him. The standard rush of cars went back and forth about a hundred feet in front of us along Western Avenue, but the side street was deserted. I relaxed slightly, letting my hand creep around to the side of my leg.
“You want something?” I asked.
“Yeah, you might say that.”
“Well, I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I said.
“For a Reel Sports interview?”
I felt a sudden sinking feeling. How the hell could he know about that unless the whole interview thing had been a ruse? I hated to think I’d been had. Again. But I tried to cover it with a quick smile of my own.
“Is that why you came by?” I said.
“Actually I came by to give you this,” he said. Red started to reach into his right side coat pocket, but he hesitated. “Relax, will you? I’m just gonna get a cell phone out of my pocket, okay?”
“That’s all it better be,” I said. My hand went back to the comfort of the Beretta’s grip.
His head rocked slightly, back and forth, as he withdrew a cell phone from the pocket, just as he said he would, flipped open the speaker flap, and pressed the recall button. Winking at me, he raised it to his ear and then spoke moments later.
“Boss? I’m with Shade now.” He paused, listened, then extended the phone toward me. “It’s for you.”
I took the phone with my left hand, keeping my right on the Beretta. Pressing it to my ear, I said, “Yeah.”
“Ah, Mr. Shade, I presume?” a voice said. It had a distinctly British inflection, but with enough of a foreign sounding pitch that I knew it had to be Olijede. “I am very, very glad that we are finally getting the chance to speak to each other directly.”
“Me too. I take it you got my message?”
“Oh, but of course,” Olijede said. He laughed. It was one of those forced, foreign-sounding laughs that seem to rise up a few octaves on the second syllable. Like the sound of somebody laughing at something that wasn’t really funny. “I must say, you are a very, very clever man, Mr. Shade.”
“So you want to discuss my finder’s fee, or what?”
“Actually, I had something slightly different in mind,” he said. “I thought that perhaps an exchange of property would be more in order.”
“I’m listening.”
“Very good, because there is someone with me now that I wish you to hear.” I heard a muffling sound with the phone, then seconds later a terrified hello from Laurie.
“Laurie, are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Ron,” she said. Her voice sounded far away, like she was standing at the other end of some long dark tunnel. I mentally cursed myself for letting her drift into harm’s way. It must have shown on my face because Red suddenly got a bigger smirk on his face.
“Have they hurt you?” I asked.
“No, I’m all right. Just kind of scared, is all.”
“It’ll all be okay,” I said, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. “Where are you now? Can you tell?”
“Not really,” she said. “We’re in some kind of black limousine with tinted windows.”
Before I could say anything else, her voice and breathing stopped coming from the phone and Olijede came back on the line.
“Ah, Mr. Shade, I trust the brevity of that conversation will suffice. Now, here are my terms. You shall take my associate to the location of my property and turn it over to him. This shall be done immediately. When he calls me back to acknowledge that this has been done, you will be told where to pick up your friend.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Is this perfectly clear?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But make sure this is perfectly clear too. If you hurt her in any way, I’ll track you down and kill you.”
He responded with the irritating up-and-down laugh again. It was really starting to grate on me.
“Mr. Shade, believe me, this is not the appropriate time for threats and bravado,” he said. “Now do as you have been told, and all will be well. Please hand the phone back to my associate at this time.”
“Just remember what I said.” I extended the phone toward Red, who was still grinning at me.
He mumbled into the phone a few times, and pressed the END button. Stepping over to the curb, Red stuck out his arm like he was hailing a cab. But instead of a cab, a small, green Ford Taurus pulled out from an adjacent alleyway and screeched to a halt in the st
reet in front of us. Two tough-looking guys sat in the front seat. One black and the other white. The black guy was behind the wheel, and the other guy was pointing a gun at me. Red paused and jerked his head toward the Taurus.
“Let’s go,” he said. I saw him withdraw a snub-nosed pistol from his jacket pocket too.
I moved over toward the car and Red opened the rear door. As I started to get in, he placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Not so fast, buddy,” he said. I felt his palms begin to pat me down, lifting the rear end of my jacket and unsnapping the Beretta from its holster. The search was quick and thorough, and when he’d finished, Red punched me hard in the kidney, which doubled me over. He shoved and I bumped the side of my head on the door frame as I slid inside the rear seat area. Red got in behind me.
“Nice piece,” he said, hefting my weapon. “Lots better than your little shit twenty-two. But that did the job, I guess.”
My breathing was coming fast and sharp, the pain in my side just starting to ease. I glanced at the white guy in the front seat. He had short blond hair that had been cropped in a buzz-cut and a fat, jowly face. He grinned at me as I sat hunched over, obviously enjoying seeing me in pain. His teeth were very bad.
“So you did Peeps?” I managed to say.
Red showed me his smirk again as he pressed the ejector button and checked the magazine. He then replaced it and pulled back the slide slightly to verify that there was a round in the chamber.
“Yeah, shortly after you softened him up,” he said. “But he had it coming. Him and Paula tried a rip-off.” His eyes drifted over toward me. “But she was a lot more fun to do than him, right, Leon?” He slapped the black guy’s broad shoulder. I could see the other man’s thick lip curl up under his bushy mustache. “Which brings us to our next subject. Where’s the stuff at, Shade?”
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to say, ‘What stuff?’ ”
“Only if you want to make things difficult for your little girlfriend,” he said. “Nice-looking babe. Almost as juicy as Paula was. You fucking her?”
I said nothing. If I told them where the stuff was, they had no reason to keep me or Laurie alive. I mentally searched for an angle to play.
“Look, Shade, I’m gonna have to call the boss back in a second or two here, and if I don’t got nothing to tell him, you’re gonna be listening to the broad screaming till you talk.”
“Okay,” I said with a sigh. “The stuff’s in some blue suitcases.”
“No shit,” he said, letting the sarcasm seep into his tone. “Now quit fucking around.”
He obviously knew I was trying to stall, but it was just as obvious that short of some miracle, I was out of options.
“They’re in a storage facility on 115th Street, just past Cicero,” I said. “But it’s a place that you have to sign in and out of with high-tech security. Peeps wasn’t on the authorization list. That’s why he couldn’t get in.”
“What about you?” Red asked.
I quickly debated saying that it was only Laurie on the list, but then they could shoot me and dump me in some alley.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can get in.”
“And the key?”
“I got it on my ring.”
Red nodded, then took out the cell phone again. He pressed the RCL button and I watched the yellow numbers flash across the screen.
“Yeah, boss,” Red said into the phone. “He says the stuff’s in some kind of storage facility and he’s got the key.” He paused and listened, then his lips stretched into that smart-ass grin again. “Okay, boss,” he said and hung up.
“Lucky for you, your story’s the same as hers, Shade,” he said. “Now, show me the key.”
“It won’t do you any good,” I said, reaching in my pocket for my keys. “Like I told you, you got to sign in and out.”
“But you’re on the list, right?” He grinned. It was more of a statement than a question.
I nodded. The pain in my back had pretty much subsided, but my ear still felt sore where it had smacked against the metal of the car frame.
“Where’s this place at now?” Leon, the driver asked.
I told him the address, measuring my breaths like I was still in pain. Let Red think that he’d hurt me more than he had. Maybe it would cause him to drop his guard. The car began to roll up toward Western. I had maybe ten or fifteen minutes tops before we’d get there. Time enough, I hoped, to figure a way out…for myself and for Laurie.
As we got to 111th Street, Red told Leon to hang a right and pull into the alley behind a row of small businesses. Leon carefully signaled, then made the turn. We proceeded south in the alley for about twenty yards when Red spoke again.
“Okay, this is cool. Paulie, get out and get in the trunk.”
“Huh?” Paulie said. His mouth hung open like he didn’t know if Red was kidding him or what.
“I said, get out and get in the fucking trunk,” Red repeated.
“What for?”
Red reached forward and slapped him. It wasn’t a hard slap, but had just enough force to spur the lethargic Paulie into action.
“Aww, man, I don’t want to get in no trunk,” he pleaded.
“Shut up and do it,” Red said. “We’re gonna have three guys driving into the place, and three guys driving out.”
“And none of the rest of you gonna pass for me,” Leon said with a grin. I noticed the ease with which he and Red related to one another. Like they’d worked together a long time, each knowing the other guy’s moves.
Red told Leon to give him the keys and to keep me covered. Leon pulled a chrome-plated snub-nosed .38 out of his pocket, transferred it to his left hand, and turned slightly so he could point it at me. Red and Paulie got out. Moments later I heard the trunk lid raise up and felt the suspension shift as Paulie apparently stepped into the trunk.
Three men in, three men out, he’d said. That meant on the return trip I’d probably be the one riding where Paulie was now. The only question was, would I be alive?
CHAPTER 33
It was a different guy behind the desk at the storage facility. Red stood beside me with his hand conspicuously placed in his right-side coat pocket. And I knew he wasn’t holding the cell phone either. I signed the register card, and the clerk took it to the ledger to verify the signature. Satisfied, he slid the card in an automatic stamping machine and then pressed the three buttons. Through the windows I saw the heavy gate beginning to retract electronically.
“Just beep your horn when you’re ready to leave,” he said.
I nodded, wishing he hadn’t made the departure so easy. Red and I went back outside to the Taurus.
I got in the front passenger and Red jumped in behind me.
“Which way?” Leon asked.
“Fourteen twenty-seven,” I said, looking at the seven-foot-high cyclone fence with the barbed wire on top. It was a dubious place for a break. I was effectively trapped, like I was in maximum security, and Red seemed to sense this. His tone was more relaxed as he spoke.
“I hope you’re not trying to pull a fast one on us, Shade,” he said. “Paula thought she could, and Peeps, too.”
“And I know what happened to them,” I said.
He grinned. “Right. So I’m gonna just verify that the stuff’s where you say it is before I make the call back to the boss about your girlfriend.”
“It’s there,” I said. But silently my mind was racing. If he had been lulled into a state of semicomplacency, and he wanted to check for the drugs, it meant that he might be a tad lax and preoccupied. Maybe. But what other chance did I have? I knew that once he had those suitcases, and I replaced idiot Paulie in the trunk, it would be all over for me. And for Laurie, too.
Leon stopped in the aisle in front of the storage locker. He glanced around. No one else was anywhere in sight.
“Cameras,” he said, pointing to the one mounted on the pole at the end of the aisle.
Red nodded, then said, “Shade, get out rea
l slow and open the fucking door.” He removed the Beretta for emphasis.
I got out, jiggled loose the key, and inserted it in the keyhole. The door began to raise. For an instant I considered doing a quick roll under it and trying to lower it quickly, but Red and Leon both were getting out now. Plus, that would only trap me inside. The door continued its elevation, curling into the top section of the storage locker just under the ceiling. Reaching around, I flipped up the light switch. Inside, the four suitcases sat along with the black leather case containing the cash. Red smirked and stepped inside, the Beretta held loosely now down by his leg.
“Get Paulie out of the trunk and give me the tire iron,” he said.
Leon snapped the car keys between his dark fingers.
“What’s in that bag?” Red asked.
“Money,” I said, moving toward it. “You can have it. Let me show you.”
“Hold it,” he said, raising the Beretta and waving me over by the door, half watching me, and half watching the bag as he edged around. To my side Leon was opening the lid and Paulie was clambering out of the trunk. Red knelt, holding the pistol loosely, and he gripped the leather material with his left hand and placed two of the fingers of his right on the tab of the zipper.
I knew it was now or never as I made my move, rushing toward him and snapping a kick at Red’s right elbow. I felt my instep connect and saw the Beretta go flying, skittering across the bare concrete floor and smacking against the brick wall. Leon and Paulie began their rush, and I did a quick skip-step sideways, slamming a low side-kick into Paulie, who was closer. He doubled over, as I had hoped, and I shoved him the rest of the way to the floor, causing Leon to trip. I saw Leon’s right hand bringing up the .38 as he fell, so I clipped him right on the point of his chin as he crumbled. The gun discharged, searing the left side of my face with a flare of light and heat. My hands grabbed for his wrist as he hit the floor, and when I felt the cool solid-ness of the metal I ripped and twisted the weapon away from him.
Windy City Knights Page 26