Tina moved quickly, sticking a microphone in the brunette’s face as Eric shot video of it. She asked, ‘You’re performing sex acts for money here, is that right?’
The brunette slid off the guy and tried to cover herself. The guy on the bench looked like he was going to have a heart attack. I pointed out to Tina a small container and a cocaine spoon next to him on the bench.
‘What’s that?’ she asked me.
‘Cocaine.’
Then, to the brunette, she said, ‘Where did you get the cocaine from?’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ the brunette muttered as she scrambled to get back into a pair of hot pants.
Tina turned to the guy lying prone in front of us. ‘How much did you pay for these sex acts? And how much for the cocaine?’
He rolled over on his side and tried to hide his face. ‘Leave me out of this, please. I have a wife, for God’s sake.’
I heard some noise from behind. I grabbed Tina. She tried to shake me off, but I got her turned around and heading towards the curtains. Eric followed behind us.
‘I had more questions,’ she started to complain, and then she saw Earl moving towards us with a baseball bat.
‘I don’t know what you thought you were going to do here, Joe, but you’re fucking nuts,’ he said.
‘We’re leaving,’ I said. ‘Just get out of our way.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ I could see that vein on his neck beating like crazy and his eyes shining with murder. ‘Your two friends here ain’t going anywhere with that camera, and you’re not going anywhere period.’
‘We don’t want any trouble, Earl.’
He laughed at that. ‘You got a sense of humor, Joe, I’ll give you that.’ Then he brought the bat back so he could knock the camera – and maybe Eric’s head along with it – across the room. I dove for his knees trying to tackle him. Hitting him was like hitting a concrete block, but I knocked him back a few feet. He was able to stay on his feet but he swung off balance and missed Eric by a foot.
‘Fucking asshole,’ he swore. I was scrambling to get to my feet when he whacked me across the shoulders with the bat. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he swung with one hand and was off balance, but it still hurt like hell and dropped me back to my knees. He stepped forward and kicked me hard in the ribs, knocking me back on the floor. He brought his foot back for another kick, but before he could deliver it there was a dull thud and then a glass crashing next to me.
I looked up and saw that Earl had his hand up to his eye as blood seeped through his fingers. His face was beet red when he turned towards Tina, an open gash along the side of his eye. He glared at her for only a second before turning back to me, but it was all the time I needed. I grabbed a piece of the broken glass and drove upward with it, driving it between his legs. He screamed and reached down, but I knocked his hand away and kept pushing upward. Blood was getting all over my hand. I wasn’t sure whether it was his or mine, but I kept shoving the broken glass into him. He fell over. I let go then and watched as he writhed on the floor, moaning and grabbing at his wound. Then I got to my feet.
I looked around. The girl who had been dancing onstage was standing naked, looking on in horror. All at once she put her hands to her face and started screaming. Milling around were all the club patrons, staring at us, trying to decide what to do. Tina looked like she was in shock. Eric was next to her, shaking his head as he muttered to himself how unbelievably incredible the whole thing was. I grabbed Tina by the arm. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I told her. She didn’t seem capable of anything, but once I started dragging her, her legs moved on their own. One of the patrons, a heavyset bearded guy in a flannel shirt and overalls, tried to stop me. I shoved an open palm into his chin and he staggered back. After that no one else tried anything. My side hurt like hell. I figured Earl cracked one of my ribs, but I kept moving and dragging Tina with me. By the time Tina and I reached the exit Eric came to life and sprinted after us. As we got out of there I could still hear the dancer screaming her head off.
‘We better get moving,’ I told Eric. He fumbled for his car keys and dropped them a couple of times before he got the door opened. He was shaking like a leaf.
‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Damn. I wish I had taken video of that.’
My hand stung. I looked down and realized I had more than just Earl’s blood on me. My hand had been sliced open by the broken glass. I took my shirt off and wrapped it around the wound.
‘Are you okay?’ Eric asked.
‘I sliced my hand with the glass. I’m going to need stitches.’
‘There’s a hospital in Bradley,’ he said. ‘Let me take you to the emergency room.’
‘No thanks, just get out of here. You can take me to a hospital in Burlington.’
Tina seemed to wake up from the back seat. ‘We should call the police.’
‘Uh-uh. Not here we shouldn’t,’ I said.
We were still on one of the back roads when I spotted a black Range Rover speeding towards us. I lowered myself and saw Junior’s two goons in it. Duane was driving and Jamie was next to him with his head bandaged up. They looked over at us, but neither of them saw me as they passed by. I turned and watched them through the back window. I knew they were racing towards Kelley’s. I pretty much guessed Earl had called them when he first saw me.
‘Are we in danger?’ Tina asked. She sounded scared. As I looked at her I noticed how close she was to crying.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Once this story airs, Junior’s history. Don’t worry about him.’
When we got to Burlington, we stopped off at the Chapel Memorial Hospital’s emergency room. I got a tetanus shot and sixteen stitches for my hand, which they also bandaged up. I also had my chest X-rayed and found that I had a couple of bruised ribs, nothing broken. After that we stopped off at a department store and Eric ran in and bought me a new polo shirt and a pair of pants. I needed a new pair of pants because I had bled over the pair I was wearing. We then drove back to the station and I changed in the men’s room. When I got out, Eileen was waiting for me. Her edges seemed even sharper than before.
‘You promised me nothing was going to happen there,’ she said in a voice that could cut glass.
‘Either of those two get hurt?’ I asked.
‘Tina’s in shock.’
‘She’s a gutsy kid. She’ll be okay. If she hadn’t nailed Earl Kelley with that glass I’d probably be dead now.’
‘Damn you, you promised me!’
‘Yeah? Why should you’ve believed anything I said? Look at me. I’m a dirty ex-cop and a paroled felon. If you’re going to believe me that’s your problem.’
She was livid. ‘You sonofabitch.’
‘What are you complaining about? You have your story. And it’s a good one. I’m the one with the bruised ribs and a sliced hand.’
‘You almost killed a man in that club.’
I made a face. ‘It was self-defense. He was going to take Eric’s head off with that baseball bat if I didn’t do anything. And he was going to do a lot worse to me. Anyway, he’ll live.’
‘You just about castrated him!’
‘Look, he was trying to kill me.’ I was starting to get annoyed. It was bad enough that my hand throbbed like crazy and that I could barely breathe without a searing pain sucking my breath away, but now I had to listen to this?
‘Eileen,’ I continued, trying to keep my voice under control, ‘just be happy, okay? You got a great story. There was no other way of getting it. If you had gotten the cops in Bradley involved you would’ve been shut down from the start. Let’s just finish this up and show that college club distributing crystal meth.’
‘We’re done. I’m not sending you out with any of my people again.’
It was pretty much what I had expected. It didn’t matter, though. I had thought the matter out when were driving back from Bradley.
‘You don’t need me for this last part,’ I said. ‘The club is
the Blue Horn in Eastfield. Get the state police involved if you want. Have one of your interns or someone young go there tonight and buy crystal meth, and then send the police and Eric in. It will work fine.’
She wanted to argue with me. I could see it in her eyes, but there was nothing to argue about.
‘You’re still going to interview me on the air tonight, right?’ I asked.
‘I’m going to have to. I can’t find any other link between Manny Vassey, his son, and that old tannery you broke into.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I checked at the Registry of Deeds and that property is owned by a June Hathaway.’
‘I never heard of her.’
‘You wouldn’t have. She died in seventy-two.’
‘So Vassey has a bogus owner on the deed. So what? Someone’s been paying the water and power bills there. And buying supplies. And paying for the rubbish removal. You’ll find a link if you dig around.’
‘I hope so.’
‘You’ll find one,’ I said. ‘Anyway, someone’s going to talk. If not one of the guys we caught on video then one of the cops on Manny’s payroll. Someone’s going to roll over on him to protect themselves. You’ll tie Manny and Junior up in this.’
‘We’ll see. But we will need you to talk about what you know on the air tonight. In the meantime, the Registry of Deeds is open for another half-hour. It’s probably a waste of time, but I’ll send one of my people over to find out what name is on the Blue Horn’s deed.’
She wavered a moment before leaving. I could see the uncertainty creeping into her eyes and then spreading and dulling her hard edges. I could almost hear the thoughts running through her. What if I was lying about Manny and Junior’s involvement? All she had at the moment was my word on it.
I should’ve been expecting something like that. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise. I don’t know. Maybe I was too distracted by the pain ripping into my side and the raw throbbing in my hand, and maybe that was keeping me from thinking clearly, but I couldn’t help worrying. My plan was to bust Junior’s gambling and drug operations wide open and make it political suicide for Phil to strike any deal protecting him. I knew that given enough time Manny and Junior would be tied to what was going on in that tannery and their other businesses. For now it would have to be my word against theirs.
I hung around the station. Around six Eileen found me and told me what I was expecting – that according to the deed the Blue Horn had been sold three months ago to June Hathaway. She had the name of the previous owner and she was going to try to track him down and see whether he was willing to make a statement. At a quarter past seven Tina found me and asked whether I wanted to join her for dinner. My stomach felt as if it were in knots, but I needed something to kill the time so I went with her.
We ended up going to a steakhouse about a mile from the station. Tina ordered a sirloin and I stuck with a salad and cream of mushroom soup. It was about all I felt I could handle.
She was trying to smile at me, but concern was wrecking it.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘I’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘No serious damage done at least.’
‘That was really amazing in there,’ she said. ‘I thought that bartender was going to kill all of us.’
‘He gave it his best shot. I guess it just wasn’t good enough.’ I paused for a moment to take a bite of my salad and to look at Tina. She was very pretty, there was no arguing about that, but it was the way she was looking at me that got to me. Maybe years ago when I was quarterbacking my high school football team, Elaine might have looked at me like that, but probably not even then. I don’t think any woman, or really anyone, had ever looked at me with the admiration with which Tina did at that moment. It choked me up a bit.
‘You were really amazing in there, Joe.’
‘You were pretty damn good yourself.’ There was something contagious about her smile, and I couldn’t help smiling back. ‘That was quick thinking on your part. If you hadn’t nailed Earl with that glass, I would’ve been taken out of there in a body bag.’
‘I can’t believe I did that,’ she said, laughing. ‘It just happened. I guess it was reflex.’
We ate quietly after that, but it was comfortable quiet. I even realized I had stopped worrying at one point. Near the end, Tina showed me an uneasy smile.
‘Joe, I don’t know if you’ve been watching our broadcasts, but for the last couple of weeks we’ve been hitting you pretty hard.’
‘That’s okay. I deserve it.’
‘I don’t know if that’s true anymore. What I saw today was incredible. For those things to be going on shows that the whole Bradley police force has to be dirty. It’s no wonder you ended up the way you did. But what you did today was amazing. You’re going to be single-handedly responsible for cleaning up this whole area.’
‘I appreciate that,’ I said. ‘Not every cop on the Bradley force is dirty. Some are, but not all. I ended up the way I did because of my own mistakes. I have no one to blame.’
The way she looked at me right then almost stopped my heart.
‘Why don’t we find someplace we can be alone, Joe?’
I wanted to. God did I want to. But she was almost twenty years younger than me. There was more to it than that. I didn’t even know if I had a future past the next few hours. But there was still more. There was Charlotte. I know it’s crazy, but I started feeling guilty. As nuts as Charlotte was, I knew that in some bizarre way we were meant for each other. That at some level we understood each other and that we could help each other. As beautiful and sane as Tina was, she didn’t have a clue what was inside me.
‘Tina,’ I said. ‘It’s eight thirty and we got that news broadcast at ten.’
‘We have enough time.’
‘I’ve got to be honest,’ I said. ‘I want to more than you could ever imagine, but I’m feeling pretty beat up right now.’
‘I’ll be gentle.’
‘Why don’t we give it a few days and see how we’re feeling then?’
That just heated her up more. The desire flushing her face was almost too much for me. I almost weakened. But Jesus, I couldn’t do that to her. Instead, I just sat back and looked into her eyes. She showed me a little smile, took a business card from her pocketbook, wrote on the back of it, and handed it to me.
‘Don’t wait too long, Joe,’ she said, showing me probably the nicest smile I’d ever seen. I looked on the back of the card and saw that she had written her home number on it and had drawn a big heart next to it. I put the card away in my wallet.
We finished our dinner and headed back to the station. When we got there, I found out that things had gone as planned at the Blue Horn. One of the interns bought several hits of crystal meth and then the state police raided the place. They got almost forty thousand dollars’ worth of drugs in the raid and the station shot video of it all. Eileen had one of her reporters over at the state police headquarters, but it sounded like none of the Blue Horn employees that were rounded up were willing to say who they worked for.
The station was able to condense the video they shot into a ninety-second clip. They opened with Tina reporting the story. After that I was brought on and interviewed live for about three minutes. It went better than I could’ve expected. Tina acted as if everything I was saying was a proven fact, even though there was nothing yet tying Manny and Junior to any of it.
After the broadcast Eileen came over and offered me her hand.
‘I have to admit you did some good work here, Joe,’ she said.
I thanked her. As I was getting ready to leave, Tina came over and kissed me on the cheek. When I turned to say something to her, she grabbed me around the neck and kissed me long and hard on the mouth. When we separated her eyes were sparkling.
‘Don’t wait too long to call me,’ she said. I felt a lump in my throat as I watched her walk away.
My head was buzzing as I made my way to my car. I couldn’t help thin
king of Tina, of the way it felt when she kissed me, of how badly I realized I wanted her. I guess I was too caught up in my thoughts to notice them, at least until it was too late. At the last second I caught sight of Jamie’s bandaged head out of the corner of my eye. Then I felt the blow to my damaged ribs. He must’ve used brass knuckles. The pain from the blow dropped me to my knees and brought hot tears to my eyes. It froze me. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move.
‘We’ve been looking for you all day,’ Jamie whispered in my ear. Then I took another shot to the ribs. The pain exploded in me. And then everything went black. I felt a sensation of being picked up and thrown. And then nothing.
Chapter 20
I couldn’t have been out for more than a couple of minutes. At least, I don’t think so. When I came to I was in the back seat. Duane was next to me, a hard smirk on his face as he stuck a nine-millimeter automatic into my side. Jamie was up front driving.
‘Look who just woke up,’ Duane said, his voice just above a whisper.
‘Have a nice nap?’ Jamie asked, chuckling to himself.
Duane shoved the gun harder into my side. ‘It’s not polite to ignore a civil question,’ he said, his smirk tightening on his face.
Softly, because of the pain, I said, ‘Yeah, I had a nice peaceful nap. Thanks. How’s your head?’
‘A lot better than your ribs,’ Jamie said. ‘By the way, we’re not here for any collections, but you probably know that.’
‘You want to guess what we’re here for?’ Duane said, his mouth inches from my ear. His breath smelled like raw sewage.
‘Did you watch the news tonight?’ I asked.
‘It don’t matter,’ Duane said in a soft whisper. ‘It’s not going to change what’s going to happen tonight.’
Jamie chuckled to himself over some private joke. Then he said, ‘Mr Vassey’s waiting for you. He bought himself a new butcher’s apron for the occasion.’
I closed my eyes and tried to think. I knew Junior’s order was to bring me back alive, and I knew Duane would be slow pulling the trigger. The gun was mostly for show, he’d use it only if he had to. I had nothing to lose so I took my chance.
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