Rico turned and saw Lance walking across the porch toward him. He had a deep frown on his face, concern in his eyes. “Sir? Are you okay?”
“We’ve got problems.”
“What’d you find out, sir?”
“He was stabbed in the abdomen.”
“Was it your boy?”
“Bartender’s description matches Stockbridge to a tee. Short hair. Muscles. Stitches across his cheek. Has to be him.”
“Did he tell you what happened?”
“He said Jim started the fight, but I don’t believe him. Jim doesn’t start fights, but he does know how to finish them.”
“Who was it?”
“According to the fat boy in there, a biker gang from Havelock. Call themselves the Posse.”
“Posse. Posse. Don’t believe I’ve heard of that gang, sir.”
“Yeah, well me neither ‘til this morning when I did some research on the Core Street Crew. Everywhere I looked the name Posse kept coming up. So I called a friend in Narcotics, right? Seems this Posse’s been causing trouble from Havelock to Myrtle Beach, cooking up meth faster than Krispy-Kreme turns out donuts, and using local gangs to take it to the street.”
“And you believe they’ll try bringing it here.”
“I think they already have, Lance. And I think this bar here is a major distribution point. Look,” Rico said, scratching his chin and glancing around the premises. “Put out an APB on Jim. I want him found. You stay here until the detectives arrive, then get in your car and cruise back towards town. Take Reservoir. Search every nook and cranny. I’m gonna head in the other direction.”
“The Terrace?”
“Yeah, I’m gonna see if can’t locate that punk, J-Rock. He’s involved in this somehow.”
“I believe you’re right.”
Rico glanced at the bloodstained sidewalk. “Jim’s out there somewhere, Lance, and he could be hurt bad.”
“Or worse, sir.”
“Yeah, or worse—” Rico shifted his gaze past the tall shoreline grasses to the dark water beyond. “He could be dead.”
Chapter 15
Waking up alone in near pitch darkness with no idea where you are or how you got there, a sharp metallic taste in your mouth, the smell of fresh vomit in your nostrils, and the scampering of tiny sharp feet across your chest could be considered one definition of a rude awakening. Jim sure thought so. He lashed out, knocking away the crab, or whatever poor creature it happened to be, then sat up groggily and touched the side of his head. A large goose egg sat where his left temple used to be. His cheek felt sticky and wet. The stitches were still intact but the flesh burned as if every piece of surgical thread had been ripped out. He sat up and touched his abdomen. The skin felt tender and raw, encrusted with a thin layer of blood, but the laceration felt intact, certainly not as deep as he had thought.
He sniffed the air. The familiar odor of rotten oyster shells and muck filled his nasal cavities. He suddenly realized he was shivering, half-naked, wearing nothing but his boxers and with no idea why. Soft mud oozed between his toes, dry reeds cut at his skin, and the knuckles of his right hand were sodden and sticky with blood. He stood up to get his bearings. Nothing seemed clear except for the pain between his ears and the musical sound of steel wires clanging against metal poles somewhere to his left. He glanced that way and saw a series of blurry orange lamps hovering above a grayed wooden structure that extended out into the water. The docks.
Jim tried to move toward the lights, but his feet sunk in the smelly muck. He pulled and struggled, each step harder than the last as he sunk deeper into the harbor mud. His legs felt like wobbly posts. He felt himself falling. He reached out and grabbed a creosote post. He clung to it as long as he could and then dropped to his knees in the mud and vomited until he was empty.
“Oh, Jesus,” he cried. “Help me.”
He heard the sucking sound of footsteps in the mud behind him. He felt a hand touch his shoulder. He gave a reflexive jerk and tried to rise. Images of gangsters and denim clad bullies filled his mind. He tried to swing at his unseen assailant but his arms were too heavy. He tried to stand but he was just too weak. He slumped over and gave in.
“Please,” he murmured. “Just don’t kill me.”
“It’s okay,” a gentle voice said. “I’m a friend.”
Jim felt a warm blanket fall across his back. A pair of steady hands grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. There was gentleness to the touch, a comforting strength in the grip and a familiarity to the voice, but Jim had neither the strength nor the energy to place it. He let go, giving in to his intuition and the overwhelming sense of peace that exuded from the bent and gnarly looking old man standing beside him.
“I’m cold.” Jim groaned and pulled the blanket tight.
“Come with me then. I know where there’s shelter.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
Jim felt the old man’s arm wrap around his shoulder. He forgot about the boat and followed him, pulling himself out of the sucking mud and onto harder ground. He had no idea where he was being led, or by whom, but for the first time in his life he felt completely helpless, more than willing to accept the helping hand. “Who are you?” he whispered. “I don’t understand.”
The old man stopped, turned, his wrinkled face lit by the harsh beam of a sodium vapor dock light. His head was bald, his nose flat, and his chin covered with days growth of gray stubble, but it was the eyes that caught Jim’s attention. Those same eyes, one hazy and oblique, the other deep brown and penetrating with speckles as brilliant as gold. Jim jumped as if having pulled back a rock to discover a rattlesnake.
“I remember you.”
“Yes?”
“You were…you were the one I—”
“I was the one you fed. Now it’s my turn to help you.”
Chapter 16
Rico turned onto Core Street and killed the headlights. He stopped his cruiser beside the gated entrance to The Garden Terrace Apartments. The ugly, black wrought iron enclosure that encircled the complex reminded him of a prison fence, the graffiti covered brick walls just beyond it the prison. He shifted his gaze to the end of the street. Eight young men stood in a loose circle in front of the entrance to the Queen Street alley. Their heights varied by as much as a foot, but each wore the same style of clothing—baggy pants, heavy team jackets, and expensive looking red sneakers, the type endorsed by millionaire basketball players, the type worn by the gang—The Core Street Crew.
Rico called in his position and asked the police dispatcher to have Lance join him on a special operations channel. The dispatcher assigned him OPS-8 and asked him to standby. Rico switched frequencies and waited. Ten seconds later he heard his partner’s voice.
“Two fifty-three on OPS-eight…go ahead, sir.”
“Lance,” Rico said. “Any sign of Jim?”
“No sir, nothing.”
“What’s your twenty?”
“Liberty at Harvard.”
“Good. Meet me on Core Street.” Rico’s mind raced. “Better still, come in from the Queen Street alley. I’m looking at a group of kids hanging out on Core Street in front of the alley where Sid Drake was murdered. Pretty sure it’s The Crew. Gonna check ‘em out. See if we can find some answers.”
Rico released his mike. Lance Albright’s response came back sharp. Immediate.
“On my way.”
Rico released the holster strap on his .45 then reached under his seat and touched his 12-gauge to make sure it was there. He sat for the next couple of moments considering his moves. He knew he should probably call for an arrest warrant—follow procedure, take J-Rock in and question him downtown the legal way—but at that moment he didn’t especially feel like following protocol. Jim was in trouble—maybe even dying—and finding him was all that mattered. He had already made his decision. His radio crackled and beeped.
“Two fifty-three to Two twenty-two…”
“Yeah, Lanc
e, go.”
“Top of Queen, sir.”
“All right,” Rico said. “Simple plan—eight of them, two of us. They’re about ten yards from the alley. I’m gonna drive down and confront them. Back me up from inside the alley.”
“Yes sir.”
Rico waited about ten seconds then turned on his headlights and started down the street. The boys looked up, startled, and then moved apart slightly as if to build a perimeter. Rico recognized the large boy in the center—the gang’s warlord, a tough kid named Michael Johnson, J-Rock’s second in command. He rolled to a stop and got out of the car. Michael stood rock steady, his dark face swollen, his lip freshly stitched.
“Yo, Michael,” Rico said, hoping his attempt at local vernacular would help. Michael gazed at him. The other boys watched him cautiously as a pack of wolves might a lumbering grizzly. Rico chuckled and stepped forward. “I’m trying to find J-Rock. Know where he is?”
“Jay-who?”
Rico stopped in front of Michael and folded his arms. “Have you seen him?”
“He be lookin’ for the Jay, man.” Michael sneered and looked around at his boys. “Ya’ll be seeing him tonight?” No one responded. “You see,” Michael said, “Jay gone. You got business wit’ us you talk to me from now on.”
“All right, then suppose you tell me where I can find your suppliers.”
“What suppliers?”
“White boys riding around on Harleys…the one’s that’s been spoon-feeding you all that crystal meth and coke you’ve been spreading around town. I’m trying to find them.”
“You trying to find ‘em? Well I be looking around me, mista cop, and I only see one white boy.”
“Yeah?”
“I guess you be lookin’ in da wrong place, yo?”
Rico chuckled as he studied his opponent. Michael Johnson was larger than he’d expected, six-two, two hundred pounds maybe, and, like J-Rock, he carried himself with the kind of arrogance only seen in a man who knew he held all the cards. But what impressed him most were the jagged scars that covered Michael’s face and head, and the fact that he could actually walk after the beating Jim had given him. He decided he didn’t like Michael Johnson, not one bit. He took a mental picture of his face, tucked it away, and turned to the teenager standing beside him.
He looked like a leader too, most likely a gunman of some kind. He stood tall and thick in a Chicago Bulls team jacket and baggy pants, with a black durag that covered a skull that looked totally devoid of hair. Two black eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets as if trying to pop from his skull, but the anger that Rico had expected to see wasn’t there. The expression seemed almost pleading. Rico nodded to him. “What’s your name, son?”
Michael cut in. “Don’t say nothin’, Zee!”
“Zee, huh?”
Rico saw Zee’s eyes shift. His lips drew tight. He looked away as if afraid to make eye contact.
“You got something to tell me, Zee?”
“He ain’t got nothing to tell you, cop.”
“I think that’s up to him.”
Michael sneered and spread out his hands. Rico noticed the gang members begin to fan out around him. Most of the boys looked nervous, he thought, scared even, but that didn’t change the fact that he was outnumbered eight-to-one. It was time to improve the odds. He raised his chin and nodded toward the alley, and suddenly, like a demon appearing out of thin air, a dark figure dressed in a black tactical uniform emerged. Rico thought he looked like a ninja as he stepped from the shadows, but instead of a sword he carried a jet black assault rifle with a laser scope that projected a bright red dot on the center of Michael’s chest. Michael gasped and stepped back. Two of his gang members ran. Lance Albright walked to within a few feet of the gang and stopped.
“Well,” he said, his thick British accent rolling easily from his lips. “Evening, gents.”
“Okay,” Rico said taking a step closer to Michael. “Now that I’ve got your full attention, how about telling me where I can find the Havelock Posse.”
Chapter 17
Morning came with a weariness Jim had only experienced once following surgery for a gunshot wound that had nearly taken his life. He felt weak, hung over, and his head ached as if smacked by the wooden boom of a fifty-foot sloop. The sidewalk felt cold and hard against his butt. He threw aside the two tattered blankets covering his body and sat up. He tried to focus. He heard traffic. Honking horns. He was lying on a sidewalk in downtown East Beach, but where? A pedestrian walked past. Jim rose to a kneeling position. The storefront across the street looked familiar, the café to its right even more, but he still couldn’t quite put it together. He turned around and jumped. A cardboard action figure pointed a gun at him from the other side of a large plate-glass window. A torn movie poster of the same character lay on the floor beside the cutout. “Of course, the old movie theater, but how did I…”
A familiar rumble caught Jim’s attention. He looked up and saw an East Beach ambulance cruise past. The number on the rear quarter-panel read EB-7.
“Hey,” he yelled. “That’s my truck!”
EB-7 didn’t even slow down, the ambulance sped down the street and disappeared around the corner.
Jim stood up. His legs felt shaky. The morning air felt cold against his thighs and chest. He looked down at himself and realized that he was wearing nothing but a pair of mud-stained boxers. He glanced at his wrist. His watch was missing. He touched the laceration traversing his belly—a thin red line drawn tight by a dark red scab. He winced. It was painful but only superficial. He would survive. He suddenly noticed a small bundle next to the wall where he’d slept. A brown paper bag with its top rolled tight. Curious, he opened it and looked inside. He found a clean flannel shirt, khaki pants, and a pair of white socks rolled into a ball. A pair of Converse tennis shoes lay beneath the clothes along with a handwritten note signed by someone named, Jonas. It read, simply:
...I was hungry and they fed me. I was a stranger and they invited me in. I needed clothes and they clothed me. Get dressed and come inside, it’s warm.
Jim got dressed, oblivious to the stares of the passersby, then opened the front door to the Village Theater and walked inside.
The interior of the building felt warm and dry, but it carried the thick musty aroma of a deserted building. The once bright burgundy carpet lay heavily stained and trampled, with easy to follow trails that led from the front door to the empty glass candy counter in the center of the lobby. Empty poster cases adorned the walls. A wide staircase ascended to the balcony, its sweeping brass railings long since tarnished. In all, the theater lobby was a sad scene, a mere shadow of the one Jim remembered from his childhood, a dark forlorn building teeming with Hollywood ghosts.
He heard an amplified voice somewhere in the distance. It sounded hollow, as if fed through a long tube that opened up in a large empty room. He followed the echo across the lobby. The volume increased with each step until he came to the double doors that led to the theater. He opened one door and looked in on a surprising scene. A tall black man stood on the narrow stage in front of the old movie screen. He paced back and forth with a Bible in one hand and a microphone in the other. His voice boomed. Twenty-five or thirty people sat on the first four rows, their heads turning back and forth to follow him around the stage.
Jim slithered into a seat on the shadowed back row of the theater, to sit and warm himself, and to watch the strange looking man moving about the stage. Long and skinny with thin gray hair and gold wire-rimmed spectacles that hung off the end of a long pointed beak, Jim thought he resembled a modern day Ebenezer Scrooge, only without the money to buy himself a new suit of clothes. His slacks appeared moth eaten and worn, his jacket, outdated and about a half-size too small. In all, despite his excessive height, he did not appear especially captivating or charismatic, but there was no smallness to his voice. Or his presence. Every syllable that came out of his mouth boomed with authority. Every consonant sounded crisp and precise. Ever
y word seemed tailored to the group.
“...but he was no different than you or I,” the preacher exclaimed. “Just an ordinary man placed into an extraordinary situation. And look what happened! People, because of his courage, his determination, and his willingness to serve Almighty God, the president of the most bloodthirsty gang in New York City got down on his knees and cried out to Jesus Christ!” The preacher paused, breathing heavily. Jim thought he could hear him wheezing. He walked behind the podium, took a sip of water, and then walked back to the front of the stage. “Now if God can use a skinny young preacher like David Wilkerson, a hardened gangster like Nicky Cruz, and an ordinary man like Sid Drake, then he can use you.”
Sid!
Jim stood up and gazed at the peculiar old man, certain that his ears were playing tricks on him. The preacher gazed at him and nodded.
“That’s right. You heard me.”
He leaned forward and pointed his finger at Jim and then lowered it on the congregation and continued his ranting.
“Sid was willing to die for what he believed.”
He held his Bible over his head and shook it three times.
“Willing to die to share the word of God!”
Jim wasn’t sure if he felt more like crying or running up on stage and beating the old man to death. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Sid! He’s talking about Sid!
“Now listen to me, people. Sid Drake knew what he was doing. He loved the Lord with all his heart. And he served Him to the end. To the very end. But this isn’t about Sid anymore, is it? Or about David Wilkerson or Nicky Cruz. It’s about you. God called you, each of you, to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the streets of this town. So the question is what will you do?”
The preacher’s eyes suddenly turned and bore in on Jim.
“What will you do?”
After the closing hymn the congregation stood and filed out, but Jim kept his seat. He felt compelled to wait. He was not sure why, he just needed to. Ebenezer Scrooge hugged the last departing member of his congregation and then walked to the back of the theater and sat down beside Jim. For a moment neither man spoke. Jim felt uneasy, as if he were sitting in the schoolmaster’s office awaiting a much deserved scolding, but the admonishment never came. The preacher finally spoke. Without the microphone his voice sounded soft. Effeminate.
Tested by Fire - He sought revenge ... He found forgiveness (Medic 7 Series - Book 1) Page 10