21 Hours

by Dustin Stevens

  "Will do," I promised, standing and extending my hand. "Let me know how those Blacks work out."

  Rosie stood and returned the shake, but ignored the comment. "It's damn good to see you O, I'm awfully sorry about your niece."

  Without another word we parted, both headed in opposite directions.

  Chapter Seven

  The backlight on the truck's control panel illuminated the clock's numbers against the dash as I drove south on I-270, telling me it was right at six-thirty. Counting backwards from my conversation with Lex a few hours before, the clock in my head reset to nineteen hours.

  And counting.

  The spring sun was well on its way towards the horizon, but still a couple inches of orange remained visible as I pushed south. Late day rays threw themselves across the highway, bouncing off the windshields of passing cars. Again I was working at the nail on my left ring finger, ignoring the taste of blood in my mouth. On my lap sat Rosie's note, the same ball of barbed wire just inches from it in my stomach.

  In the southwest corner of Columbus I exited the freeway and wound my way through the suburb of Grove City, one of many non-descript bergs situated around the outer belt. The same array of chain restaurants and convenience stores greeted me as I passed through, indiscernible from a thousand other suburbs across the country. Nearly all of the eateries were full with clumps of people standing outside the door waiting to get in, the Saturday night rush in full effect.

  With the exception of another jolt of caffeine, there wasn't a food on the planet that sounded appealing at the moment.

  Two miles off the freeway, on the outer edge of Grove City, sat a small airstrip. As late as the eighties, FedEx used the strip for hauling all cargo going in and out of the city, but they had long ago switched their operations to Port Columbus on the other side of town. At the time, the strip was remote enough and innocuous enough that nobody thought to tear it down.

  Now, nobody really cared.

  The place looked desolate as I pulled off the road and through the main drive. A rusted chain link fence ran the perimeter and a gate sagged open on either end. A handful of small outbuildings dotted the place, most of them in shambles and badly in need of a coat of paint. Foot tall weeds poked up through cracks in the pavement and slapped at the undercarriage my truck as I eased through.

  The row of outbuildings extended for a couple of hundred yards, offset by a crumbling runway extended out to the right. At the very back of the grounds sat what I guessed used to be the shipping warehouse for the strip. A faded FedEx logo was still stenciled on one side of it. There were no cars parked anywhere, the only signs of life being dull light poking through a pair of second floor windows.

  The ball of barbed wire grew even larger in my stomach as I pulled up in front of the only door I could see and climbed out. I made a point to show my hands at all times as I walked to the door, knocked three times and took a step back. Above me I could hear the small video camera overlooking the door turn to focus on my face, but I kept my eyes locked straight ahead.

  Minutes crawled by. Sweat formed in the small of my back and along my upper lip, my heart pounding in my chest. I had no idea what I was about to walk into, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be friendly. Not at first anyway.

  Three minutes turned to four and then five before I could hear the slow turning of a heavy metal latch behind the door. A moment later it creaked open, nothing but darkness within.

  Out of it extended the end of a double-barreled shotgun.

  "What do you want white boy?" a deep voice asked. I couldn't see a single thing inside, but he sounded like a very pissed off Ving Rhames.

  A lump settled in my throat as I stared at the shotgun. At this range there was no chance of him missing. At this range, there was no chance that thing wouldn't separate my shoulders from my waist. "I'm here to see Troy Hobbes."

  The voice paused a second, making no attempt to lower the gun. "What business you got with T-bone?"

  "His uncle Roosevelt sent me." Slowly I raised my hands and widened my fingers, then reached into my right jacket pocket. Using just two fingers I pulled the note from it and extended it forward into the darkness.

  A beefy paw snatched the note away, almost taking half my hand with it. "Wait here," the voice said before pulling the barrel of the gun back into the darkness and slamming the door shut.

  My heart rate receded slightly as I waited. I wasn't shot on sight, which gave me a chance. I just had to trust Rosie's note would do the rest.

  He didn't disappoint.

  The second time the door opened, I was greeted by a man instead of a gun. I was only half right on my earlier assessment. I thought he sounded like Ving Rhames, but this man was much, much larger than that. He was dressed entirely in black, with boots, cargo pants and a tank top. A stack of necklaces hung from his neck. He looked to weight somewhere in the high two-hundreds, all of it thick muscle.

  I was right about him sounding extremely pissed off.

  "T-bone will see you," he said, standing aside so I could walk through. He still held the shotgun, though he now gripped it by the barrel and let it swing by his side. He motioned with his head towards an office on the second floor, the source of the light visible from outside. "Top of the stairs," he said, slamming the door closed and wrenching the lock shut as I stepped through.

  "Thank you," I mumbled and walked straight for the metal stairwell bolted to the side of the wall. I kept my eyes facing forward as I walked, trying not to notice the rest of the warehouse. In my periphery I could see rows of televisions, stereos and DVD players, all stacked high on pallets along the walls. Between them were dozens of high-end cars parked in uniform rows.

  Most of the room was shrouded in darkness, the place still for the night. During the day, I imagined it resembled a small city in there.

  The metal stairs groaned as I ascended them, my boots scraping against their grated tops. I counted out two dozen of them before I reached the top landing, paused, and knocked on the closed door in front of me.

  "Come in."

  Gently I pushed the door open and stepped inside, forced to squint by the blinding light of the office. In front of me was an enormous oak desk that extended nearly the length of the office. On either side were two black leather loveseats, both of them holding a carbon copy of Ving Rhames downstairs, complete with shotguns.

  Behind the desk sat a young black man with short cropped hair and a thin goatee. He too wore a collection of chains around his neck, accented by diamond studs in either ear. Best guess, he couldn't have been more than mid-twenties in age as he sat and stared at me.

  I could see the note spread open on his desk and waited for him to speak first.

  "This note says you're a friend of my uncle's."

  It was definitely a statement and not a question, but I nodded anyway. "Yes."

  "And that you need a favor."

  Another statement. "Yes."

  He gazed at each of his associates and said, "If my uncle says you're cool, we're cool. That's the only reason you're standing here right now. As far as a favor goes, I can only do what I can do."

  "That's fair," I said. And it was. I couldn't ask anybody to stick their neck out on my behalf. "I'm actually only looking for information."

  Again, he glanced at each of his cohorts. "What kind of information?"

  The first real question he'd asked since I'd been there. Things seemed to be moving okay so far. I decided to push the boundaries a tiny bit. "Your uncle tells me you guys keep a tight finger on what happens around town. You ever come across anybody moving kids?"

  Troy made a face. "Moving kids? What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Kidnapping them. Selling them off."

  The look slowly slid from his face. It became a blank slate for several long seconds as he stared at me. "You see anything downstairs when you walked up?"

  My pulse ticked up a bit. I wasn't sure where he was going with this. "Not really. It was pretty dark." I want
ed to seem as non-threatening as possible, but I knew lying to him would only piss them off. "Few electronics, couple of cars."

  Troy gave me an apprising look, nodded imperceptibly. "Exactly. That's what we do here. We don't mess with no kids."

  "I meant no disrespect.”

  The air pulled out of the room for a moment as he studied me. "Why you asking about kidnappings?"

  "My niece was taken yesterday. I have a very small window to try and find her. I was hoping you guys might be able to tell me where to start looking."

  Again Troy consulted each of his workers. Neither one gave any indication of even being alive except to occasionally blink as they stared daggers into me.

  "When my parents died, Unc took me in as his own. For him, I'm going to help you, but I'm going to tell you right now it won't seem like help when you get there."

  My eyes narrowed, but I said nothing.

  "The guy you're looking for is a cat named Merric. Works out of a warehouse in Reynoldsburg."

  "That's who's running the kids?" I asked.

  Troy shook his head from side to side. "He's only a middle man. Pure snatch and grab guy. Sends them to Cleveland or Cincinnati, that's where the real brains to the operation are."

  As he spoke, Troy leaned forward and scribbled an address on a corner of Rosie's note. "But like I said, you won't get in there the way you did here."

  I accepted the bit of paper from him and asked, "How so?"

  "Let's just say nobody gets in to see him without a little initiation first."

  What that meant I had no idea, but if Troy was taking the time to warn me, it couldn't be good. "Thank you."

  Troy nodded and said, "Just so you know, Merric and I aren't exactly friends. It wouldn't be in your best interests to mention my name to him."

  I nodded in understanding.

  "And to be clear, if you did, friends with Unc or not, our next meeting won't be quite so civil."

  Again, I nodded in understanding.

  Chapter Eight

  The world outside grew darker by the minute. Inside the truck, the lights of the dash now glowed back at me. The speedometer said I was pushing seventy as I rounded the southern outer belt of Columbus towards Reynoldsburg. The clock pointed out it was almost eight.

  Seventeen hours and change remaining.

  I wasn't entirely sure where the address Troy gave me was, but I knew the street name well enough to know where to start looking. The first twenty-three years of my life were all spent in the greater Columbus area, albeit the last five of those I wasn't exactly out and about much. There are certain locations you come to know even if you've never seen them.

  Diamore Road was one of those places, but not in a good way. The kind of place that if you found yourself there, you knew you'd made a wrong turn somewhere.

  And here I was driving directly into it on a Saturday night.

  When Lex first called me, I did the math and decided that driving was the obvious choice. Much less hassle, and I'd arrive in the same amount of time. Not to be discounted though was the fact that in my truck, I could bring along a few extra supplies I might need along the way.

  As I drove, I inventoried the list in my head.

  Behind the front bench seat was a Winchester 30.06, a beautiful model I purchased in Cheyenne to hunt antelope with. Thank God for Wyoming and its lax gun laws.

  In the glove box was a Luger .9mm the ranch gave me to carry when riding fence lines. So far I'd only had to use it once to fire on a rattlesnake, but I knew it was sighted in up to fifty yards. Anything past that was a crap shoot.

  Common sense told me I couldn't walk in to see Merric carrying either of those. I pushed them from my mind and went on down the list, making notations of the more primitive weapons I had on hand.

  In the bed of the truck was my oversized toolbox, complete with a chisel, a couple of screwdrivers and a pipe wrench. All solid weapons in a jam, but nothing I could carry in with me.

  That left only the tire iron stashed under the seat and the ceramic switchblade I'd kept on hand every day since leaving prison. Press button release with a four inch blade, it was made somewhere in Germany and easily passed through any metal detector on the planet. So far the only blood it had ever drawn was my own, an accident that occurred once while opening a Christmas package from my mother. It was the first time I'd ever used the knife and I didn't expect it to tear through the packaging tape quite so easily. One good tug sent it straight into my leg, gashing my thigh and ruining a perfectly good pair of Wrangler's.

  Lesson learned.

  I could feel the sweat again return to my face and back as I hooked a left onto Diamore and headed north towards the interior of the city. With a shift of my weight I pulled the knife from the jacket of my coat and slid it into the top of my sock. I dropped the leg of my jeans back down around it and could feel the elastic holding it in place between my calf and boot.

  The numbers on the buildings ticked by as I held the address up and looked for the number Troy gave me. Based on the street I was on and the place I had just been I paid special attention to the dark corners along the roadway, thinking I was looking for a warehouse tucked away in a shady back alley.

  What I found instead was nothing short of an Atlantic City casino.

  The warehouse was lit up like a Christmas tree. A series of neon lights announcing various alcoholic offerings lined the windows, the parking lot packed with automobiles ranging from decrepit Pintos to high end Escalades. A steady stream of people, as varied in their appearances as the cars they drove, moved towards the front door.

  Sliding into the back of the lot I checked the address and craned to see the building numbers on either side of me. I definitely had the right place.

  My heart beat receded for a moment before picking back up again. This wasn't what I was expecting at all. On one hand, there were plenty of witnesses around to whatever might be lying inside. On the other, there could be many, many more enemies than I anticipated.

  Easing the truck into the back corner of the lot, I checked to make sure the knife was still wedged in place and climbed out. Ignoring the stares of people around me, I fell into the flow moving towards the front door.

  Two men standing a few inches above five and a half feet tall manned the front door, each of them approaching the width of a car. Both wore ill-fitting suits and dark sunglasses, their faces locked straight ahead as people passed by. Between them was a set of double doors standing open, spilling light and sound out into the parking lot.

  I wasn't sure how to approach the situation, but this seemed like as good an opportunity as any. I peeled myself off to the side from the flow of foot traffic and slid to a stop next to one of the bouncers. Up close I could see he was much younger than I originally thought and his face was pockmarked with acne scars. No doubt the result of years of steroid abuse.

  "Excuse me," I said, pulling to a stop several feet away from him. The man made no effort to turn and face me. "Excuse me.”

  The man continued to gaze straight ahead, no indication that he even knew I was there. If not for how damaged his skin was, I might have thought him made of wax.

  It was time to try a different tactic. I moved closer so that my face was less than a foot from his. "I need to see Merric."

  For the first time, the man moved. A muscle twitched in his neck, followed by a small arch in his left eyebrow. Still he made no attempt to respond or even look at me.

  Instead, he raised his right wrist to his mouth and said, "We've got one for Peka." Just as fast he dropped his hand back down and grasped it in front of him.

  "Excuse me?" I asked, confusion of my face.

  A moment later a man emerged from the double doors, the only one moving against the flow of traffic. He wore a black pinstriped suit with a pink shirt beneath it opened at the collar. Thick dark hair was combed straight back against his head and his face was clean shaven. He extended a hand to me as he approached, his dark features shaped into a broad smile
.

  "Welcome, welcome," he said, shaking my hand vigorously. His voice had the slightest tinge of a European accent, somewhat masked by faux enthusiasm. "My name is Vincent. Please, come with me."

  Never in my life had I been to Las Vegas, but the interior of the building resembled what I'd always imagined Sin City to look like. The entire first floor was a cornucopia of slot machines and gaming tables, sights and sound spilling in all directions. A wide staircase stood before us, leading up to a second floor that housed much the same.

  Massive throngs of people grouped up around nearly all the tables. Many plainly wore how well they were doing on their faces. The ones that weren't doing well were even more obvious.

  Vincent noticed my jaw go slack as we walked and smiled. "Quite an impressive sight, no?"

  "For sure," I mumbled. "I had no idea anything like this existed in Columbus."

  "Technically, it doesn't," Vincent replied. "But we're only breaking the law if the law shows up to say so, right?" he added with a wink. The implication was readily apparent.

  I nodded, but said nothing.

  "So you are here for Peka?" Vincent asked, apprising me as we swung by the lights of the casino and exited through a metal door along the wall.

  "I have no idea what Peka is," I answered. "I merely asked to speak with Merric."

  A small smile grew on Vincent's face. "Same thing."

  I made no attempt to hide my confusion. "What the hell's going on here?"

  Vincent stopped and pointed to a second door in front of us. It was painted entirely in black save a red X through the center. "Go through that door and wait. It will take a few minutes for us to get things ready."

  "Get what things ready? What is all this?" I asked. Apprehension welled inside me. I was in no position to lash out right now, but every nerve in my body told me something was afoot.

  Vincent again smiled and held his hands in front of him. "Do not worry my friend. Right through that door and Merric will see you shortly."