Edge of the Pit

by Bill Thesken

  I’d have to be patient and wait it out.

  If I wanted to talk to this guy I’d have to bunker down and wait till he left his fortress, and follow him and catch him without the bulk of his security contingent hovering around him. Catch him with his pants down so to speak.

  Catch him and do what?

  Ask him what he did with his girlfriend to start with. Might as well. As deep as I was into this I might as well go right to the top and see if this guy had something to do with it. After all, wasn’t that what the police normally did with missing person cases? Look at those people who were closest to the missing first and foremost? The friends, the family, the husband or the boyfriend. Only in this case they had a convenient fall guy, a big dummy, a patsy who everyone thought must be the guilty one.

  Me.

  I waited and watched. It was half past midnight now, the time of night my old Dad warned me about, the bottom half of the night, and the type of people that were out and about had a different vibe around them. The bottom feeders.

  I saw robbers and winos and party animals. Hookers and pimps, and drug dealers and users, along with some basic hardworking honest people who were on their way home, or to a midnight job to pay the bills.

  People that were heading to a graveyard shift, or heading to the graveyard.

  Traffic was thinner but it had more of an edge to it. Something was about to go down. The hair on the back of my neck was standing on end and I focused the night scope on the scene in front of me.

  There was movement at the porte-cochere. The uniformed security guard got out of his chair and stood at attention by the door while the doorman waved to the white limo and it pulled up to the glass doors, and then out of the building walked a thin dark well-dressed man in a sport suit and tie. He nodded to the uniformed security guard and stood talking to the doorman for a moment and then got into the back seat of the limo. The dark sedan pulled in behind the limo and both cars drove out of the porte-cochere and onto the highway, heading my way. They were on the move and so was I.

  As they passed by I turned my head to the side to shield my face, then started the car and made my way onto the highway and did a U-turn, heading northwest on Wilshire. I kept ten car lengths behind them and a couple of cars in between, and then a slow poke in a lime green electric car pulled in front of me and slowed down to the speed limit of all things, and the limo was getting way too far in front so I pulled into the right lane and passed the slow poke.

  Not a good maneuver if you’re following someone, it was a red flag for the security detail if they were watching for a tail, but there was nothing I could do. I had to stay close. The slow poke flipped me off as I passed him, some old hippie in a tie dye shirt and bandana, and I checked my urge to show him a gun barrel.

  Ten minutes of driving and we were on the outskirts of La Brea. My newest favorite town. Beautiful downtown La Brea, tar pits and rap clubs and jealous boyfriends with guns. The limo and sedan turned down a side street and I followed as far behind as I could. This was familiar territory, unfortunately.

  In neon lights in the distance the sign on the side of the building said simply, ‘The Pit’. The rap club that I was most likely banned from for life.

  They probably had my picture on the wall by the front door with a bullseye on my face and the caption: ‘Shoot on Sight’.

  I parked on the corner two blocks from the club and pulled out my night scope. The limo parked directly in front of the front entrance under the neon lights, with the black sedan nestled neatly behind it’s bumper. Charles Washington got out of the limo and it looked like he was talking to the doorman, who looked very serious and nodded his head at whatever was being said to him. It was a different doorman than the one that took a shot at me last night and got a couple in his ankles in return. This guy looked bigger, calmer, and tougher.

  I was in no hurry, in fact the longer C-Dub stayed up the better my odds were of catching him and his security team dozing. Stay up till dawn for all I care you bastard, I’ll catch you right before the sun rises when you’re at your most vulnerable.

  Maybe he was going in for a nightcap or two, which would be even better. Invite your crew in and give them a couple of drinks while you’re at it. But he didn’t go into the club, instead walking alone across the street to the boarded up and darkened tattoo parlor. It was a two story box shaped building, large display windows on the bottom floor and small windows on the second floor.

  The limo driver and the two guys from the sedan stood next to the cars laughing and joking about something with the doorman. The doorman however wasn’t laughing and the joke was obviously at his expense. I swung the scope over to the tattoo parlor as C-Dub opened the front door and then closed it behind him. I switched to infrared and could see him through the side windows climbing stairs inside the dark building and then on the second floor a dim light went on in one of the interior rooms.

  His two-man security team started walking towards the front door of the club, and went inside leaving their boss unprotected.

  The light in the second floor window of the tattoo parlor was still on, and even though there were curtains across the window, I could see shadows moving across the wall inside the room. Time for me to go, and I took a deep breath, checked my weapons and got slowly out of the car. My plan was simple, go around the block and come in on the alleyway next to the tattoo parlor and find a way in.

  I strolled nonchalantly across the street being careful not to limp, and then hustled around the block and found myself at the alleyway next to the parlor. It was dark and narrow with trash cans and cars and it smelled like oil and piss and wet garbage.

  I startled a bum who was trying to sleep between two parked cars with a bunched up newspaper for a pillow. He mumbled something unintelligible and laid his head back down in the gutter.

  I was nestled in the darkness of the alleyway, pressing my body against the brick wall as I walked halfway down the alley now, heading for window and door near the front of the building. Lined up perfectly like I was a bullet inside the barrel of a gun aimed at the other side of the street and the entrance to the club, the limo and the sedans and the doorman standing alone. He seemed to look over to the alley now and then but there’s no way he could see me with my dark clothes and black beanie over my head and half my face.

  The window was a foot from the wooden door which was thick and old and locked. The bottom of the window was at shoulder height, three feet square and boarded with two by fours that were fastened with deck screws just like the ones that I saw at the building by the Chinese restaurant. I wondered why they didn’t use ply board like that other building. Maybe they ran out. The boards, three in all went straight up and down like the bars on a prison cell. I’d have to pry at least two off to get at through the window but I forgot to bring my crowbar and I made a mental note to include that item the next time I wanted to break into an abandoned building.

  I didn’t have a crowbar, but I had a knife, a very sharp knife and I pulled it from the side of my boot. The handle was thick and grippy and fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. With enough time, I could cut down an oak tree, but I didn’t have much time and this was no oak tree.

  The window frame was made of two by four wood and I started carving it right next to where the wooden prison bars were attached. Carving and slicing on the window frame until the wood came off like a slice of turkey on Thanksgiving day with the deck screws still attached. I carved the bottom portion of two of the wooden prison bars free from the building and then pried them up and away so I could crawl under them.

  Now I could get in through the window, but I still had the window itself to contend with. Two glass panes where one slid up and over the other and was latched in the middle. It too was locked. It was the kind of lock that was as big as your thumb and shaped like a half moon that you pulled with a knob and rotated open. I wedged the knife blade between the panels and with the point of the blade sticking straight into the metal sliding bolt started
working it open a millimeter at a time and within a few seconds I was in. The window opened a crack with the release of tension on the lock and I opened it enough so I could crawl up and in.

  There was a metal table under the window and I cautiously put some weight on it while keeping my shoulders and arms on the inside of the window sill until I was clear and had my feet secure on the ground. The bottom floor was still and dark and I could hear my heart beating in the silence.

  Somewhere above on the second floor was the faint sound of people talking. Dimly resonating through the walls and down the stairway. Two distinct voices, with diverging cadences and tones, both masculine and I’d hoped to hear the sound of a girls voice, or none at all. Someone was with C-Dub, maybe one of his security guys had come through the front while I was sneaking in the side, and if I wanted to get some answers out of him I’d have to deal with the other guy first most likely.

  The sound of a door opened and heavy footsteps on the landing and then coming down the stairs towards the front of the store. I slid quickly to the bottom and side of the stairs and crouched, waiting. My eyes were used to the darkness, but the other guy coming out of a lit room and down darkened stairs was at a disadvantage, he didn’t see me till it was too late.

  Karate chop, L-18 neck ligament swift and clean, and I held him up with one hand over his mouth and my arm around his neck and lowered him gently to the ground, his knees folding under him like a marionette with his strings cut from above.

  It wasn’t one of the guys from the security detail in the sedan that followed the limo to the club. This guy was thinner and wiry, with a short haircut, a military cut. Just like Parnell. Maybe this was another one of the hit squad. I searched his pockets and found a small pistol with a silencer attached to the barrel that went straight into my back pocket. I pulled him back into the shadows and pressed my thumbs into the knock out points to give me a few extra minutes.

  I could hear some movement in the room at the top of the stairs, a piece of furniture being moved, and then a voice began talking low and slow, one voice, one cadence, one inflection. Maybe he was talking to himself I thought, or on the phone to someone, it sounded like he was giving instructions, and I slid over to the front of the stairway and started walking up, wary of a loose step and a squeak that would give me away. I stayed away from the center of the stairs and made my way up the left side. I stepped carefully and quietly, putting all my weight on the leading foot only when I was sure that no sound would come from the action.

  The door at the top of the stairs was open just a crack, enough to let out a sliver of golden light and I kept to the side of the stairway as I climbed, and crouched ever so slightly and blending into the handrail in case someone on the other side of the street could see through the boarded up windows and sound the alarm. I was at the top now and hovered near the wall and creeping nearer to the door so I could finally see inside. The voice was clearer now, methodical and cruel.

  “You didn’t think I’d find out what you did? You think I’m stupid? All this time building my empire, my reputation and you thought you could tear me down? Take me for a ride? Nobody messes with me and gets away with it, nobody. When I get finished with you they won’t find a single piece of flesh from your body, they’ll only find bones, brittle and whitened and broken, bits and pieces here and there and everywhere, like a jigsaw puzzle. When I get halfway finished with you, you’ll wish you were never born, you’ll yell it out loud with a muffled scream and no one will hear you.”

  A piece of furniture was being moved again, as though he was rising from a chair and pushing it away. It seemed as though he was talking on the phone to someone, threatening them. If I could catch him with his back to the door and mid-sentence I could immobilize him and get some answers out of him. I peered through the crack in the door. He was standing next to an empty chair, probably the one he’d been sitting in, standing there and looking down at another chair that was not empty. He continued on.

  “You didn’t think I’d find out about your little boyfriend down in Rio? Your little cabana boy you picked up by the pool last month on tour. The penniless towel boy. Didn’t think I would find out did you? Making a fool out of me.” He spit on the floor in front of her.

  The girl in the chair, bound and gagged with long brown hair and terrified blood shot and tear filled eyes shook her head and pleaded with a mute voice. It was the star. The Nightingale. He had a gun in his hand, it looked like a Glock with a silencer and he put the barrel next to her cheek and shook his head.

  “Tsk tsk tsk. You should have known better Gale. But that’s okay, it’s all going to work out for the best for everyone, except for you that is, and cabana boy, we’ll take care of him later, I’ll send someone down to pay him a visit when this is over and done with. It’s actually very, very good that I found out who you really are, a backstabbing money grubbing wench like the rest of them. It’s good that I found out, it really is. You see I traded you in for something much better, traded up in fact, I traded you, your records, your voice, your life’s work which I own like I own a slave, traded you in for a piece of one of the biggest sports franchises in the world. The timing actually couldn’t have been much better. If I hadn’t found out about your little betrayal, there’s no way I would have parted with you. No way. But now? Well let’s just say it’s all over except for the crying. My deal is done, I sold the record company earlier this evening, inked the contract, got the money transferred into my account and now all I need to do is negate my contract with you. Sever my ties so to speak. Financially, it doesn’t matter to me now whether you live or die. But in here,” he tapped on his chest. “Spiritually, it does matter. We’re taking you out of here in a box, taking you somewhere far out in the desert where the coyotes roam and if someone ever does find you, they won’t even know what they’re looking at.”

  Unfortunately for me, I thought, if she was never found, I would be a fugitive for life, or worse.

  Also unfortunate right now was the fact that she was facing the door that I needed to open and confront this piece of crap madman. If I opened it slowly so I could get a jump on him, her eyes would betray me and he might have the advantage. He also might kill her suddenly and they could still pin the blame on me somehow.

  I needed her safe and sound and very much alive. If I came out with my gun blazing, she might get hit, he might get a shot off, you never knew. I was going to have to grapple him.

  C-Dub paced the floor with his pistol pointed down, thinking, scratching his chin and pondering, scratching and pondering some more. He seemed ready to lecture her again about what she did and what he was going to do.

  He walked in front of her blocking my view of her, and her of me and I swung the door open and lunged at him, both my hands free and I grabbed his wrist and pinned his gun arm at his side and twisted it like a crank and pulled it behind his back, gun still pointing down, his trigger finger should have been immobile but he was able to get a shot off and the sound of the bullet hitting the wood floor with a crack was much louder than the muffled sound from the silencer.

  I snapped his wrist down and the gun clattered away, then with my hip on his back and my hand around his neck I tried to Judo flip him onto the floor, but my left leg was too weak from last night’s gunshot and he was too quick, and I could tell right away that he was trained in martial arts as he slipped out of my upper throat grip with a backside flipper move and rotated low and took my feet out from under me with a leg sweep.

  I fell on my back cursing with my gun squirting out from the holster and he was on top of me straddling me and trying to land blows with his fists, and I reached up and brought him closer to minimize the damage and grappled, pulling on his shoulders to minimize the distance.

  I closed the space between his fists and my face and he had no room to wind up and the blows were ineffective and weak, I reached up with my thumbs in his eye sockets ready to blind him but he blocked my hands down and I was able to bring my good leg up and around hi
s face and leverage him off me while nearly breaking his neck.

  He sprang off me like a cat crouching and ready to attack and I stayed low ready to repel him, both our guns were lying on the ground behind me by the window, and I tried to shuffle backwards and reach for one of them.

  He rushed at me full speed with a strange growling sound coming from his throat, then Gale reached out an untethered foot as he passed by her, tripping him and he stumbled towards me wildly trying to regain his balance, bringing his right fist high in the air with the intent to bring it straight down on my head and I ducked low under the blow and used his inertia against him, harnessed his forward momentum and redirected his trajectory and body blocked him up and through the window.

  The glass shattered and he flew through the black night air into the alley below, so startled that he couldn’t even grab enough air into his lungs to scream and he hit with a dull sickening thud on the street below, shards of glass raining down on him with a tinkling sound.

  I looked down and through the broken window at the crumpled body below, arms and legs at broken angles and a dark pool of blood spreading from his head that was face down on the black asphalt. I was breathing hard from the fight and I exhaled and tried to calm myself, it wasn’t over yet.

  I pulled the gag off and untied the knots that held Gale to the back of the chair, she was sobbing and trembling in fear, tears streaming down her face and she threw her arms around me and I held her for a moment and stroked the back of her head.

  “There there, it’s okay now, he’s gone from this world. Can you stand up? Can you walk?” I looked into her eyes. “My name is Badger, I was on the security detail when you got kidnapped. I was on the perimeter but a sniper took me out before I could help. I’m here to get you out of here.” I could see by her eyes that she trusted me. I asked her again. “Can you walk?”