Murders at Hollings General ddb-1

by Jerry Labriola

  David removed the photos from the envelope and handed them to Willie, along with the picture of the Bugles brothers. "Do you remember seeing any of those six men-either in here or in the area?"

  Willie inspected the front and back of each photo separately while David zeroed in on his expression. He learned nothing.

  Willie handed them back. "Can't say that I have … no, I'm afraid not. The killer's one of them?"

  "We don't know yet." It was the response David had anticipated. He exaggerated neatness in returning the photos to the envelope while he thought of his next move. "Well, thanks anyway," he said, his voice as even as Willie's. He turned and gazed about the sparsely occupied tables and then out the front plateglass window, into the darkening and empty tangle of streets. He turned back to Willie.

  "Awfully quiet around here," he said. "No yelling, no sirens. What's your best guess? Crime down? Drug dealing down?"

  "Neither, but I have no inside information, know what I mean?" He scratched his stubbly chin. "The crime won't pick up for a few days. Second or third of the month. It's like clockwork. That's when the state checks come in.

  David finished the beer, dropped a twenty on the bar and handed Willie his card, asking to be notified if he came across any useful information.

  "About what I expected," David said as they walked to the Mercedes. "A minus one."

  In the car, he felt his cellular phone's vibration and checked his watch. It was five-ten.

  "He just left," Kathy said, her voice a shade above a whisper.

  "Who just left?"

  "Nick. He said again he's going up to the North End. Are you still there?"

  "We were about to leave, but not now. A white Park Avenue, right?"

  "Right."

  "Is he alone?"

  "He left here alone. Did you find out anything?"

  "Nothing more than I could have by phone. At least so far."

  David drove up and down several dimly lit side streets, settling on the darkest one. He parked the car in shadows, a vantage point allowing full view of the moonlit Blue Rock and, if he leaned forward, the two other bars as well.

  "Wake me if there's any action," Musco said, yawning.

  David used the time to evaluate the encounter with Willie Daniels and the up-front behavior of Nick Medicore. Despite a minus-one answer and the blank face, big guy Willie knows more than he lets on. His face was too blank. And Nick? Why wouldn't professional police procedure dictate being up-front with a colleague? But if his intentions are other than professional, then the announcement to Kathy was pretty clever: eliminate any suspicion over his presence in the North End.

  In an hour's worth of ten minutes, a white Buick angled into a parking space in front of the Blue Rock. David checked his watch; it was five-thirty. He decided to hold off waking Musco and arched back in his seat. Nick emerged from the car and walked around to the sidewalk. Under a lamplight, he tugged on the brim of his fedora, flicked a cigarette into the gutter and looked up and down the street. He took two steps back toward the curb and checked the crude and faded signs above the row of establishments.

  David watched as Nick went into the bar to the left of the Blue Rock. He came out in three minutes. Nick repeated the procedure with the bar to the right before finally entering the Rock, staying three minutes, getting into his car and driving off.

  David had a choice of tailing the Buick or questioning Willie. "C'mon, let's go," he said, shaking Musco. They reentered the cafe.

  "Would you mind telling me what the fellow who just left wanted-or is it too personal?" David asked, after motioning Willie to the end of the bar.

  "No problem. He flashed a badge and did what you did. He showed me two pictures and asked if I'd seen them in my place. I told him 'no.'"

  David took out the photos. "Any of these?"

  "Yeah, them two." He pointed to Foster and Corliss. "And this is the guy who came in," he added, pointing to Nick.

  David left another twenty on the bar.

  At the front of the Red Checker Cab Company, he thanked Musco and waved four one-hundred-dollar bills before him.

  Musco snapped them up and said, "Ain't this getting expensive for you?"

  "Yeah, but it's worth it. And there's more."

  "More?"

  "You're going to kill me for this, but I need you one last time, I think."

  Musco folded the bills and slowly pinched their corners together. "You think you need me, or you think it's the last time?"

  "I think it's the last time. I sure as hell hope so."

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow. Can I call you in the morning with the exact time? First I have to be sure someone's where he's supposed to be."

  Musco stared at the bills and smoothed out the corners. "I'll do it," he said, "but there's a hitch."

  "Which is?"

  "That I toss it in with today's work which you already paid me for."

  David began the drive home with several burning thoughts surfacing from a conflagration of others. If it's not Nick, then most likely Sparky's not involved. But there's that Tokyo connection. And Bernie's no surprise. But what does Nick know about Sam Corliss?

  Three blocks away, David stopped at a traffic light ten yards before the entrance to a railroad underpass. The area was desolate. The light seemed interminably red. He was momentarily more concerned with a temptation to run the light than with the silhouette of a tow truck parked near the cement embankment to his left. By the time the light had turned green, the truck lumbered from the shadows and faced the Mercedes head on. David recognized the Kermit eyes, and he felt a pulse flutter in his neck.

  The truck inched closer. There was insufficient room to charge around and forward, and David gave only passing consideration to backing up because he was certain the truck would ram him in an instant. Instead, he would wait for the driver or drivers to confront him. But be ready. He pulled in his elbow from the balmy night wind and was thankful he hadn't chosen to drive with the top down this time. He reached for his shoulder rig, quickly changed his mind in favor of greater firepower and leaned to his right, toward Friday and its Blackhawk.44 Magnum. Before he could open the case, however, he ducked at the sound of two gun blasts and shattering glass near the front of the Mercedes. David elevated himself slowly, his eyes barely eclipsing the dashboard, and saw only darkness around the frog's eyes. The headlights! They shot out my headlights! Sons of bitches! David breathed in sucking swallows, and, despite an urge to charge out and retaliate in some fashion, he reasoned it would be the worst of his limited options. Should he fire a shot out the window to show he, too, was armed?

  There was no time to exercise any option for as David lifted his left shoulder to free up its rig, he heard a popping sound and he winced from a stabbing pain beneath his collarbone-not unlike the sting of a wasp. He grabbed at the spot and felt the smooth contour of what he thought was a thin writing pen projecting from his shoulder, and, ripping it out, sank in his seat from the searing sensation of skin unwilling to let go. Then, instinctively, he locked the door and raised the window.

  David thought his eyes were crossing as he twisted the "pen" in his hand. It was a dart needle. Television shows managed to flash through his clouding mind: Wild Kingdom, National Geographic Specials. Shows of lions and bisons stunned by tranquilizer guns for scientific study. In his progressive daze, he wondered whether his ear would be tagged.

  David's head pounded and he tasted the dryness in his mouth as he smacked his lips, and he couldn't tell whether the car was spinning around him or he was spinning in it. His arms were both heavy and weak and he let them stay limp at his side. He smelled a lime cologne at the window but his head was too wobbly to turn. He wanted desperately to see not so much those who had incapacitated him as those who had shot out his headlights. He knew what was happening and he didn't know what was happening. Yet, he clung to one flimsy thought: that he had yanked out the needle almost on contact-before, he prayed, total damage had been done.


  The pounding had ceased but David knew his eyelids contracted and some breaths had been skipped. He was aware of his heartbeat, however, and although it was steady and forceful, he had no doubt he would soon slip into a coma. Or, he prayed again, into a light and temporary sleep.

  But before that, one last stab at looking out the window. He tried to force his eyes to rotate left but they were frozen forward. He then released what little positional strength he had to keep his body upright, and as he fell to his right, he was able to maneuver his head in the opposite direction for one fleeting glance. He saw three men leaning over, peering at him. They were dressed in solid black and medallions dangled from their necks. They were big, smiling and Asian. One looked in like a child at a candy store, his forehead and hands pressed against the glass. Above his right eyebrow was a small tattoo of a sword. Three of his finger tips were missing.

  When David awoke, he found himself in a sitting position but tilted at a forty-five-degree angle backward in the front seat of the Mercedes. He rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hands which were rope bound at the wrists. He could lift his arms! The moon was full and he could see the dirty steel hook before him through the windshield and felt the back bumper hit bottom as his car was towed up familiar terrain. His watch read six-thirty-five and he calculated he had been in the light sleep he had preferred over coma for forty minutes. He knew it was light because he could hear Asian chatter and grating, scratching sounds, penetrating even in sleep.

  He could turn his body freely and tried to pull apart his hands as well as his feet which were also tied at the ankles. David had never been tranquilized as such before, although he remembered coming out of Pentothal anesthesia for a minor surgical procedure while in the Navy. His nearly total lucidity at that moment was similar to what he experienced now, and he was convinced his quickness in removing the dart had something to do with it.

  David would deal with the significance of the outside landscape later, although he already had a terrifying inkling of his captives' intentions. But first he jerked around to view what he instantly grasped as the origin of the scratching sounds: the windshield, both side windows, and the back windows were covered with barbed wire. Encaged in barbed wire?

  He wedged his head into the seam of the roof and the left window and fairly determined that wide strips of wire extended down under the car's chassis. David began to breathe the breaths of a claustrophobic wrapped on all sides. He felt for his Beretta Minx and his snubby; they were gone. His cellular phone as well. Friday lay open on the passenger seat, all its contents except the.44 Magnum strewn about the floor. That gun had also disappeared.

  Outside, it was more light grey than dark, and even on a hardened dirt road and through grimy closed windows pecked at by sharp barbs, he could see dust rising. And a petroleum smell was asphyxiating as the truck ground up High Rock Mountain Road.

  David had spent many hours playing in and around High Rock during his early school days. He still knew each bend of the road and could picture its dead-end off-shoots to rugged forestland and the footpath that ended halfway up, at a rock as high as the tallest evergreen engulfing it. And he recalled never having told his parents of the mountaintop itself and walking fearlessly at its edge, a stunt he would never try today. If he ever had a chance! There was little guesswork about where his Asian friends were taking him. And what they had in mind.

  Not far from the rock, David was gripped by a sense of urgency so intense that its deadliness, though understood, was of minor consequence. Lowering the top was not an alternative, so secure was the wire cage. He had to escape and he had to escape fast. He pounded his shoulder against the door but there was little give.

  He looked left and right, and up and back and, deliberating, felt his taut expression soften. Maybe! Just maybe! At the back rim of both doors, he had noticed an inch-wide column uncovered by wire. Could it extend back toward the trunk? Frenzied, he tore the visor from its attachment and lowered the window. Using the visor as a shield, he forced his head against the barbed wire and narrowly out the window. But it was enough to confirm his hope, and he estimated the column to be at least a foot wide. Now it must extend across the roof, right?

  Awkwardly, David pushed himself forward in the angled car and searched among the dispersed items on the floor. He snapped up his flashlight. Next, he pulled back Friday's retractable panel: the secreted items were undisturbed! He fumbled among them and, after retrieving the Sauer pistol, twisted from side to side and managed to slip it into his pant's pocket. Then he unfolded the tactical knife and cut through the ropes at his ankles with ease, using both hands as one. His wrists took longer. The chatter ahead continued.

  David felt sweat spilling over his shoulder blades and rubbed his palms across his wrinkled blazer. He turned around and, kneeling, attempted to climb through the space between the seats, but it was too narrow. With a combination of bulk and adrenalized strength, however, he mangled the passenger seat like a stuffed toy and crawled into the back. His head was compressed against the roof as he ripped through the canvas with his knife, creating an opening between the last two iron struts. He suppressed the urge to laugh convulsively when he rose above the opening and realized his shoulders would clear it, too.

  David dropped back down into the car and, checking his exact whereabouts, knew the rock was nearby, that the road bifurcated around it and that the truck would have to slow up. The Mercedes was so pitched that the back end of its roof was a mere three feet from the ground. In a crouch and poised to blast off, he waited for the slowdown, but then he went limp when the truck came to a complete stop! Dive out now or wait?

  He squeezed himself into a ball. The cabin window ahead was in darkness and David assumed he was, as well. Suddenly, the truck started up again and before it could gather any speed, he plunged headfirst out the opening and, glancing off the trunk, hit the ground in a fetal but relaxed position. He rotated to the side and stretched out in one speedy motion, whereupon the steep incline took him in a roll toward dense underbrush. David scrambled to his feet and, clutching his knee, ran into the woods and found the path he knew by heart. He doubted the men were aware of losing their cargo. In any event, he never looked back and never needed the flashlight or pistol.

  In the Sunoco Station at the bottom of the mountain, he phoned Kathy at home and sketched out his ordeal. She asked no questions, but amidst her sobs, indicated she would be there immediately.

  At 10 Oak Lane, Kathy sat on the sofa staring at the floor as David approached. He had taken a shower and, now robed, was dabbing at superficial barb wounds on his forearm. She bolted up and resumed her earlier embrace.

  "They were headed for the cliff?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  She shuddered and pulled him to the sofa. "Not that it matters, darling," she said, "but what about the car?"

  He smirked and replied, "Sure as hell, it's in the ravine-and, sure as hell, they got pissed when they unhooked it. Probably pushed it over harder when they saw I wasn't around."

  David pictured the descent in his mind and wondered why he didn't feel agitated. Still numb? He kissed Kathy's lips gently. "We can check on it sometime later."

  They pressed their bodies together in a protracted silence. Finally, David broke away and said, "Christ, we forgot something."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah, drinks."

  After moving to the kitchen table where David gulped and Kathy sipped, she said, "You know, I'm confused. If they wanted to-God help us-kill you … "

  "Believe me," David interrupted, "they wanted to kill me."

  "But my point is, why like that? Why not just shoot you?"

  David didn't hesitate, as if he had reached the answer before. "I'm quite sure they were Japanese and, who knows, it may have to do with the psyche of Japanese hit men. Maybe they're latter-day samurai warriors." He put down his drink and snapped his fingers. "Come to think of it," he said, "let's look it up."

  He went to his computer corner in the den
and Kathy followed. He sat and flipped through the pages of a reference book as Kathy leaned over, her hands on his shoulders.

  "Here-here it is," he said.

  They read about organized crime elements in Japan-the Yakuza-and their loyalty rituals such as self-mutilation and tattooing.

  "Look at this," David said with disgust as he tapped on a sentence. He turned to Kathy and summarized, "Some of these goons cut off their own fingers to show respect."

  David had not told Kathy about what he had seen through his window.

  She crossed her arms and, heaving a breath, said, "It gives me shivers."

  David stared down at her. "Why so? You're a cop."

  Kathy stepped into his body and, pulling his arms around her, said, "I'm a cop, all right. A cop whose future husband was nearly tossed off a mountain by a bunch of Yacamos-or whatever they're called."

  David wiped at her eye with his hand.

  Kathy pulled back. "Who do you think ordered the hit-Bernie?"

  "Maybe so," David answered. "Pretty hard to discount his Japanese connection, wouldn't you say?" He knew his expression was taut again. "I can just feel myself throttling him to find out."

  "The reason being?"

  "The reason being he suspected I was on to his drug involvement, or soon would be."

  Bernie felt his face become a boil as he listened to Junzo.

  "So what did you do?" Bernie screamed into the phone.

  "We pushed it over the cliff. At least we got rid of the car." Each of Junzo's words was crisp.

  Bernie's were not. He ran them together, blurting, "You got rid of the car? What good is that? What fuckin' good is that?" He rubbed saliva from his lips. "You and your 'enlightened methods.' I can still hear you: 'We'll make him suffer first. We'll make him watch his ride down … down … down.' Sure you did!"

  "You want us to do it another way, Mr. Bugles?"

  "Are you kiddin'? No thanks. That's it with you guys. I should have used Baranelli in the first place. You guys stick to your pushing. That's all you can fuckin' handle. Dopes pushing dope."