One Dead Witness

by Nick Oldham

  She finished peeing and washed her hands carefully, soaping them thoroughly whilst she continued to think about Charlie Gilbert in particular.

  She looked up from her hands and caught sight of her reflection in the cracked, dirty mirror above the washstand. She closed her eyes quickly, not wishing to see the ragged reflection of someone who had been a drug abuser from the age of thirteen. The skin sagging off the bone, sunken eyes, dried-up, wrinkled lips.

  The reflection of a drug addict who had not yet died, but would do so, in the not-too-distant future. She opened her eyes and sneered at herself, briefly able to see the discoloured gums in her mouth.

  She sniffed and blew her leaking nose on a paper towel. Above her was the sound of clumping feet moving about.

  Her watery eyes rose towards the ceiling.

  The alleyway behind the shops was pitch black. Briefly Kruger regretted not taking Kelly up on her offer of night-vision goggles. However, he took his time, allowed his eyes to adjust and used the night-eye in his fingers to assist himself and Myrna as they walked down the alley, monitoring their progress on the tiny TV screen.

  She stayed at his shoulder, a cool hand gripping his bicep.

  The extension ladders hung off his other shoulder.

  He led the way without incident to the rear of Bussola’s place.

  The building was pretty much as Kruger expected it to be, making him glad he’d brought the steps. This was a high-crime neighbourhood and the rear of the disused shop was boarded up with sheet steel, riveted for the rest of time - or until demolition - into the brickwork.

  Fortunately, the first-floor windows were just that - windows. There were two, quite large, both with drapes drawn across and lights on behind, indicating occupation. Running below the windows was a metallic catwalk which formed part of the fire escape. The folding ladders which were an intrinsic part of the escape were secured at that level, out of reach from below.

  Kruger swung the set of ladders off his shoulders and gently leaned them against the shop wall. He gazed upwards at the underside of the fire escape. Slowly, quietly, he eased out the ladder extension.

  The rubber tips of the ladders rested on the outer edge of the fire escape.

  ‘Hold ‘em tight,’ he whispered to Myrna. He slid the night-eye and TV into his pocket and started to climb, rung by careful rung. When he was almost at the top, he hoisted himself onto the fire escape and dropped silently onto the catwalk.

  He reached through the rails and held the top of the ladders as Myrna ascended.

  She came up nimbly, leapt over the rail and landed next to Kruger, crouching down without a sound. Kruger relayed their progress to the team via the radio, whispering his message.

  The two of them shuffled along the catwalk on all fours towards the first window. They stopped underneath it and listened. No noise emanated from inside; nothing seemed to be going on. Kruger took a chance. He eased himself up and tried to see in by way of a minute crack down the edge of the drapes. He saw nothing. He sidled along to the centre of the window and peered in through the small aperture where the drapes hadn’t quite met.

  Instinctively he dropped back down.

  ‘One of Bussola’s bodyguards,’ he whispered to Myrna. ‘He’s sitting reading. I couldn’t see anything else.’

  Myrna helped herself to a quick look, confirming Kruger’s observation. The guy was reading a hard-core porn magazine.

  Kruger pointed to the next window, some ten feet along the catwalk. Myrna nodded. Again on hands and knees they set off. Myrna stayed right up Kruger’s ass and almost kissed it when he suddenly stopped in front of her and rose to listen at the next window.

  This time he could clearly hear voices.

  He could not see into the room, but there was a crack of light where the drapes met carelessly in the middle and the possibility of a view. This time, instead of chancing a look for himself, he reached up, using his hand rather like a periscope, and pointed the night eye into the room.

  What he saw on the TV screen nearly made him fall off the fire escape.

  Although the most common method of using cocaine is by snorting, it is alleged that the subsequent rush is not quite as intense as that produced by mainlining. But Tracey knew that if the purity of the drug was high enough, the buzz was just as good.

  The coke she used that night was first class.

  She opened her purse, unzipped the small inside pocket and removed a twenty-dollar bill she had already prepared. It was rolled up tight as a straw, both ends expertly folded over after the required’ amount of the finely grained white powder had been sifted inside the tube.

  With extreme caution, Tracey unfolded one end of the note and inserted this end into her left nostril. She closed the other nostril with her thumb to bring about better suction.

  She tilted her head back and snorted.

  Immediately her nostril froze up, showing just how pure the stuff was. Before the real buzz hit her, she quickly shoved the note up her other nostril and sniffed up the remainder of the coke from the tube, instantly freezing that one too.

  She gritted her teeth as tiny particles of the drug were taken down her passages to her throat; other particles of it were transported by the small capillaries in the mucus membrane and delivered speedily and efficiently to her brain.

  The rush slammed into her seconds later. Like an express train smashing into her cranium.

  She staggered, dropped the twenty-dollar bill and grabbed the wash-stand to steady herself.

  Her eyes rose to her reflection. She no longer saw the scrawny, drug-abused female; instead there was a transformation. She was beautiful again. Full of confidence and sass, raring to confront Charlie Gilbert and Mario Bussola. The two men who had promised so much and given so little.

  Kruger angled the TV screen in the palm of his hand to enable Myrna to see the picture properly.

  She stared down at the tiny set. Horrified, her face creased into a mask of anger. She looked quickly at Kruger. ‘The bastards,’ she uttered. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Call the cops, I imagine,’ he said. His heart rate had increased in pace to about a million beats per second. He stared back down at the sordid tableau which was being delivered to him by the latest in hi-tec. ‘Kelly?’ he hissed into his radio. ‘Are you receiving this picture?’

  ‘I was, but its gone blank for some reason. I’m trying to get it back, but there’s interference on the screen from somewhere,’ she responded desperately.

  ‘Get it fixed and get it recorded,’ Kruger ordered her, knowing there were video-recording facilities in the comms van.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘And call the go damned cops and tell ‘em to break their asses gettin’ here.’

  ‘Okay, boss.’

  ‘Cops could take for ever,’ Myrna said. ‘We can’t let this go on, Steve. If that’s not rape and that kid is older than ten years, my name’s not Myrna Rosza.’

  ‘PI’s watch - they don’t get involved,’ Kruger baulked.

  ‘Not in this case, Steve. Otherwise we might find ourselves accessories to murder.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re dead right.’ He looked at the TV screen again and made a decision - but before he could translate it into words and action, something else happened on-screen and he gasped, ‘What the hell’s this?’

  Tracey crept out of the restroom and stepped quietly down the hallway towards the foot of the stairs, feeling as though she was walking on air. She paused briefly, checked over her shoulder to ensure that the door to the telephonists’ room was still closed, then began to slowly climb the stairs. On the landing at the top she was faced with one door, which she opened.

  Beyond was a sparsely furnished room, with simple, whitewashed walls; it had been a storeroom previously. There was a door in the opposite wall next to which sat Bussola’s second bodyguard, an overweight guy with a heavy moustache but hardly any other hair. His ample ass was stuck in a plastic stacking chair, his nose in his porno mag.
At the sound of the door opening he looked up and an expression of vague annoyance crossed his face.

  He thought it was his buddy from downstairs and was ready to give him a roasting for leaving his post.

  The sight of the thin, waif-like girl puzzled him.

  ‘I’ve come to see Charlie Gilbert,’ Tracey said.

  ‘Who?’ As he said the word he remembered it was the name of Bussola’s pal. ‘Get the fuck outta here,’ he said, dismissing her with a gesture.

  ‘No.’

  He stood up and walked towards her. Tracey timed it right, ducked to his left and darted to the door, skimming past him with ease. He made a grab for her but ended up embracing himself.

  Before he could stop her, she was through the door.

  The bodyguard swore and roared at her.

  The commotion caught the attention of the two naked men in the second room, but the third person in the room continued to struggle to try and free herself from her ordeal.

  Bussola was situated at the rear of the young girl, slamming into her. He yelled angrily, ‘What the hell’s going on? Get her outta here, you fool!’

  Gilbert was positioned at the other end of the girl. He held her head down in a vice-like grip, forcing her to fellate his flaccid penis. He simply looked up, unconcerned at the interruption; his eyes were glazed over a drug-induced euphoria.

  Tracey didn’t hesitate.

  She flew across the room at Gilbert, screaming, ‘Bastard! Bastard!’ Her arms flailed like some sort of medieval instrument of war.

  Then she was on Gilbert, punching and pounding him madly, five years of hatred which had been growing inside her like a malignant tumour, now given a cathartic release.

  Gilbert rolled with the blows. Other than to raise his forearms defensively, thereby letting go of the girl’s head, his brain was unable to coordinate a proper response; within seconds Tracey had punched him over a dozen times around his head and chest.

  However, Bussola, who always kept a clear head, disengaged his cock from the girl’s anus and threw her roughly to one side. She sprawled awkwardly to the floor where she immediately scuttled to one corner of the room, cowering, shivering with fright and pain.

  Bussola and his overweight bodyguard both laid hands on Tracey at the same time. They dragged her away from Gilbert and flung her against the wall, her light weight proving no problem for them. The bodyguard moved in and laid into her, landing a devastating punch on the bridge of her nose. Her coke-frozen nostrils flattened as easily as crushing an empty match-box. She gurgled, blood gushing down her face and chest, and sank to her knees, holding her face in her hands.

  Once down there the bodyguard kicked her in the side of the head, making her jerk as if he was kicking a marionette. He continued to boot her remorselessly around the head and upper torso, watched by Bussola and Gilbert.

  ‘Everyone! Front door now! Go, c’mon, move it!’ Kruger growled urgently into his microphone.

  He had quickly considered and discarded the idea of trying to force an entry through the window, mainly because it was thick glass and would take a long time to break - and he didn’t have the right equipment anyway.

  He ran back along the catwalk, leapt on the fire-escape ladders and heaved them from their fastenings. He put a foot on the bottom rung, stepped on and the ladders dropped quickly through the walkway to ground level. He jumped off.

  Myrna was right behind him. She jumped the last five feet, hitting the ground running.

  They sprinted side by side down the alley, Kruger silently cursing his knee which clicked loudly every time his foot jarred down, sending a searing pain up through his thigh.

  By the time they reached the front of the shop, the other three had arrived. They looked cool and ready for anything. Kruger knew there and then his recruitment and selection process was spot on.

  ‘No time for a detailed explanation, people,’ Kruger shouted as he approached them. ‘Assault and battery taking place in the upstairs back room. You may need your weapons drawn - but nobody’s obliged to follow me,’ he finished off.

  He rammed his right shoulder against the front door of the shop and tried to burst it open. It didn’t budge. He measured a few steps backwards, eyed up his target area and flat-footed the door by the lock. Still nothing. He increased his effort and on the second kick it gave a little; on the third the door splintered open with a crack. Kruger rushed through like a charging rhino, having drawn his Sig which he held high in his right hand.

  None of the team took the decision to hang back.

  They followed him, guns drawn.

  Kruger’s cold experienced eyes flitted around the room as he entered, instantly taking everything in: the phone booths, the raised dais of the supervisor - and more importantly, Bussola’s bodyguard who was still in his chair by the door at the back of the room.

  Kruger dismissed the telephone side of things as no threat. He focused in on the bodyguard. Kruger was surprised to note the guy hardly moved. Their entry, which had taken three kicks and probably only ten seconds, had been long enough for any self-respecting bodyguard to prepare for appropriate action.

  This guy, however, made a sloth look slick.

  He rose from his chair and reached underneath his jacket for his piece. His eyes were wide with horror and a ‘silent scream of, ‘Oh fuck’ was on his lips as he thought, This is it. This is what I get paid for. And I’m too slow and I’m gonna die at the age of thirty-six.

  He was right in one respect. He was too slow.

  Kruger launched himself across the last six feet of space, driving his left shoulder into the guy’s lower belly, bundling him over, flattening him with a football tackle to be proud of.

  All the air gushed out of the bodyguard, all his strength with it.

  Kruger and Dale quickly heaved the man over onto his stomach, wrenched his hands behind his back. Dale knelt down in the middle of the guy’s back, driving his right knee down hard between his shoulder blades, forcing his whole weight onto him, pinning him down.

  Dale then jammed the muzzle of his gun into the man’s ear and said, ‘Don’t move.’

  ‘You take care-a him,’ Kruger said, rising. ‘Rest of you, with me now.’

  With one last flicker of his eyes around the room of stunned telephonists - most of whom were well into sex-chat - Kruger opened the door and stepped through.

  He took the stairs three at a time, creasing his knee in agony.

  Jimmy, Myrna and Kelly were right behind.

  When faced with a situation, it had always been Bussola’s policy to act first and ask questions afterwards. This was one of the reasons why he joined in beating up Tracey even though she had been overpowered within seconds. His other reason was that he was extremely annoyed at the interruption. He had been having a good time - and no one had the right to spoil that. This little bitch had to be made to realise that. Then he might talk to her. As for his bodyguards ... if the stupid bastards couldn’t keep a little girl out, what chance was there of keeping someone out who meant business?

  Bussola reached down. He wound his fingers into Tracey’s hair, got a grip and banged her head repeatedly against the wall.

  The time for talking started. ‘Now then, you little shit-for-brains, what’s all this about?’ he screamed into her bashed-up face. Blood was being flicked everywhere.

  Even if she could have replied, she did not get time, because Kruger stepped into the doorway, Sig in hand. His presence was menacing.

  ‘Stand back,’ he shouted. ‘Leave her alone.’

  Bussola stopped what he was doing, letting go of Tracey’s hair. Her head slopped to one side. The mobster stood up to his full height and coldly turned his big, fat nakedness to Kruger. Despite his predicament, his erection was still rampant and twitching against the folds of his big belly. ‘What the fuck?’ he sneered.

  ‘I said stand back and leave her alone,’ Kruger reiterated.

  Jimmy appeared behind him, Myrna and Kelly behind Jimmy.
/>   Bussola shot a glance to his bodyguard who was standing next to Tracey, looking impassively at Kruger, weighing up the odds. ‘Shoot him,’ Bussola said.

  A smile crossed the bodyguard’s fat lips. Kruger realised he was about to be tested. The guy’s hand went for his gun, but Jimmy took the initiative. He weaved past Kruger and pointed his Sig directly into the bodyguard’s face. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ he breathed. ‘You pull that weapon out nice ‘n’ slow, thumb and forefinger on the butt, then you throw it across the floor. If you don’t, I’ll pop ya, babe.’ Jimmy’s finger tightened visibly on the trigger.

  The bodyguard looked at Bussola for guidance. He got none.

  Bussola was too busy eyeing Kruger.

  The gun was extracted slowly as per instructions. The silence of the moment was punctuated by the young girl sobbing in a corner of the room and the sound of Tracey spitting blood on the floor by the bed.

  The gun clattered to the floor.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Bussola said. ‘Steve,’ he added.

  A jolt, like electricity, whipped through Kruger. It must have shown on his face.

  Bussola smiled. His erection wilted slightly. ‘Yeah, I know who you are. Surprised? That bitch I married talks of no one else.’

  ‘Move over to the wall,’ Kruger said, feeling somehow that his advantage had been taken from him. He indicated to Bussola where he wanted him to stand. The mobster did not move. Just stood there with a taunting smirk quivering on his lips. ‘Move, Mario,’ Kruger repeated. ‘The cops’re coming and I’ll tell them all sorts of lies if I have to. Y’know - about how I had to save a wretched girl’s life, how you turned on me with a gun. . . all that kinda shit, and you won’t be able to say anything , cos you’ll be ashes and so will your fatso pal here.’ Kruger’s gun pointed to the bodyguard, then flicked back to Bussola. ‘All because you refused to stand next to the wall. Very intelligent.’