by Lauren Carr
The Blue Jay baseball fan held open the door for the bird-nosed man to enter the café. Carrying his cup of coffee, Blue Jay fan touched the bill of his cap before heading back across the parking lot in the direction of the bridge to the other side of the lake.
“Are you ready to go?” Mac asked Gnarly, who was licking his chops.
He took up the leash and then stopped when he saw a white van parked directly across the street. David’s black cruiser pulled into the hotel parking lot and stopped in the space alongside it. The SUV was a few seconds ahead of the black limousine that was stopped at the corner by the red light.
“We need to go, Gnarly,” Mac said. “We need to go now.”
With that, the two of them ran across the parking lot, and hurtled the barrier between the café’s parking lot and the real estate office next door. They ran down the street to the next traffic light to cross the intersection and jogged back up the other side toward David’s cruiser.
Mac ducked behind the SUV in time to see the limousine pull into the parking lot for the Dockside Café.
Chapter Nine
“I take it things are happening,” Mac said when the back of the white van opened to invite him and Gnarly to join the party hosted by two men whom he had never met.
In the van, crowded with audio surveillance equipment, one of the men was having a soft conversation with David, who was in his police chief’s uniform.
“Who’s watching Archie?” Mac asked Randi Finnegan.
“Bogie and half of the Spencer police force are protecting her,” Randi said, “not to mention your security people.” She added, “All of my charges should be so heavily guarded.”
“It’s going down now.” David nodded out the front windshield.
Tommy Cruze’s limousine was pulling into the Dockside Cafe.
“What a small world,” Mac said. “I just came out of there.”
Randi introduced Mac to the agent in the front passenger seat of the van. “This is Special Agent Sid Delaney. He’s my inside guy with the organized crime bureau.” She gestured at the other agent manning the audio equipment. “That’s Tony Bennett.”
“Tony Bennett?” Mac smiled at the agent. “Any relation?”
The young man grinned back. “As a matter of fact, we’re cousins.”
Mac blinked. “Cousins? I’m sorry, but you’re kind of young to be Tony Bennett’s cousin.”
“Tony?” Now it was Agent Bennett’s turn to be confused. “My cousin’s name is Haley. Who are you talking about?”
Randi leaned over to tell him. “Tony’s a famous singer—a little before your time.” She told Mac, “Haley is a movie actress—a little after your time.”
David reminded them of their reason for being there. “Tommy Cruze is meeting his contract killer in that café.”
Agent Delaney pointed out the group across the street that had climbed out of the limousine. “You’re not going to believe who’s with Cruze.”
They all crowded forward to see. In addition to the driver scoping out the landscape, Tommy Cruze was deep in conversation with a bald man with a bushy white mustache.
“Who is that?” Mac asked about their interest.
“Alan Richardson,” Special Agent Delaney answered. “We’ve been trying to prove for a long time that he’s more involved with Cruze’s operation than purely with his legal counsel. If he’s there when Cruze puts out the order for this hit, we’ll have him on accessory and conspiracy.”
“Richardson was the last call that Ginger Altman made on her cell phone,” David said.
“Really?” Delaney asked with a pleased smile.
“Here comes the hit man,” Agent Bennett said. “The show is about to start, lady and gentlemen.”
Mac moved up toward the front of the van to gaze out the windshield. He recognized one of the two men going inside as the body guard, the enforcer, who had been sitting in the front of the limousine the day before.
The enforcer peered around the parking lot while talking with his companion, a muscular man dressed in a black. He had tattoos going up his neck. Both of their eyes darted around the parking lot. When they spotted the van, the men turned away to face the other direction.
Realizing that both the enforcer and the hit men were undercover federal agents, Mac smirked.
They were going into the café when the woman whom Mac had seen stumble in the parking lot earlier shot out through the open door with her bird-beaked companion close behind her.
“Nora, what did you expect me to do?” The group in the van could hear the scrawny man objecting through one of the federal agent’s audio feed. “Do you want to see me killed? What was I supposed to do?”
“Be a man for once,” they heard Nora answer before the agent wearing the mike went inside. The door closed to shut off the conversation.
Outside, Nora hurried across the parking lot in their direction with her companion lagging behind. As they passed the van on their way into the hotel, everyone ducked down and held their breath so that the couple wouldn’t be aware of the conference inside—even Gnarly seemed to sense the need to be quiet.
“Coffee?” Mac recognized the deep, commanding voice of Tommy Cruze offering the new arrivals a drink before they started with the matter at hand.
“Black,” one of the men said.
“Nothing for me,” another voice Mac didn’t recognize responded.
“Come on,” Tommy ordered. “I don’t trust a man who won’t drink with me, even if it’s only coffee.”
“Then I guess we won’t be doing business.” They heard what sounded like someone standing up.
“Wait a minute,” Tommy said. “Where are you going so fast?”
“I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to waste on people I won’t be doing any work for. Later.”
Tommy laughed. The others at the table joined in before he said, “I like you. You have guts. I respect that in a man—but not in women—especially a woman who doesn’t know who she’s supposed to be scared of, or when. A woman like that needs to be taught a lesson—a good, long lesson that involves so much pain that she’ll be begging you to put her out of her misery … which I don’t want done until she’s learned her lesson.”
“We have a problem.” Agent Delaney startled them out of the conversation.
A black SUV had pulled up near the parking lot entrance to the Dockside Café. Two men wearing jackets with “FBI” emblazed across the back in white block lettering got out.
“What is that about?” Randi asked.
Recalling the attempted hit on Archie, David said, “I don’t think they’re feds.”
“No, they’re not.” Agent Delaney shook his head. “Those aren’t government tags on that van. There’s a hit going down.”
Mac grasped the gun he wore in the waistband of his running pants. “The question is, who are they here to hit? The good guys or the bad ones?”
David threw open the door. “Doesn’t matter. We need to stop them or we won’t get enough evidence to nail Cruze.”
Gnarly jumped out the door and trotted around to the back of the van.
As if the agents inside could hear him, Agent Delaney said into his mike, “Hurry up, guys. Get the goods on Cruze and get out of there.”
Mac, David, and Randi jogged across the road in the direction of the parking lot. Each of them had taken out their guns and concealed them behind their backs.
His gold police chief’s shield shining in the morning sun, David stepped up ahead of them. “Good morning,” he called out in a cheery voice.
The man in the blue jacket who had fallen several feet behind his partner whirled around.
On David’s left, Mac caught sight of the Uzi in the assassin’s grip. “Gun!” Mac fired off three shots to drop the gunman with his ha
nd on the trigger. A continuous spray of bullets went wild around the parking lot before the Uzi dropped out his hand.
While Mac dove to the left to take cover behind a car, David and Randi went to the other side to hide behind the assailants’ van.
Unable to make it to the door, the remaining assailant fired off a spray from his automatic weapon while diving for cover in the space between Tommy Cruze’s limousine and the café’s catering van.
“At least they didn’t get inside to blow our set up,” Randi told David, who was calling on his radio for back up.
“Gee, like all these bullets flying in the parking lot isn’t going to blow it.” David called across the parking lot to Mac, “You okay?”
Mac gave him the signal of a thumbs up.
The federal agents’ van was sitting helplessly across the street. Their parking space had a clear view of the café in order to keep tabs on Tommy Cruze. Now, since the assassin had a clear view of it, and there was no place for the agents to seek cover upon exiting, it had become a kill zone. Agents Delaney and Bennett couldn’t come out to assist Mac, David, and Randi without getting cut in half by the Uzi.
“Back up is coming,” David signaled to Mac at the same time that a spatter of shots came from behind the limousine when the shooter opened fire.
Glass rained down on them from car windows. Metal and gravel flew around them. Screaming, Randi ducked while David covered her as best he could. As fast and furious as the bullets were flying, their weapons were no match. They were outgunned.
As abruptly as the shooting started, it stopped.
For a moment, there was silence while Mac, Randi, and David held their breath.
Mac felt his chest. His heart was still beating as fast as it could.
Anguished screams came from the direction of the shooter. He sounded like a victim of a monster from some horror film—specifically, a werewolf movie. His cry was liberally mixed with snarling growls.
Mac rose to his feet and peered around from behind the car.
The bloodied body was sprawled on the ground in the middle of the parking lot where the shooter had tried to escape the ambush that had come up from behind.
His face covered with blood and the strap of the Uzi in his jaws, Gnarly trotted out from behind the limousine and over to Mac. The dog dropped the weapon at his master’s feet as if it were a stick he had retrieved in a game of fetch.
“When you said back up was coming, I assumed they would be in a police cruiser,” Randi told David, “not a dog collar.”
“Are you okay?” Agent Bennett asked them. “If it wasn’t for your dog coming up over the top of the van—I never saw anything like it, except maybe in a military special forces K-9.”
Special Agent Delaney ran past them and into the Dockside Café.
David and Randi were examining the two dead assassins. Gnarly had ripped open the throat of the man who had them pinned. Blood had sprayed from the severed jugular vein and coated the sides of the van and the limousine.
“I guess the operation is blown.” Mac knelt to examine Gnarly. Blood dripped from his jowls. “They can’t get Tommy Cruze on soliciting murder for hire.”
“Now it’s a whole different ball game,” Bennett said.
The woman who had served Mac his coffee came running out of the café with her daughter in her arms. Hysteria filled her face. “Help! Somebody help us!” A large handbag flapping from where it hung off her shoulders, she ran to Randi who hugged both her and the little girl.
“What’s going on?” David asked Agent Bennett.
“People are dropping dead inside the cafe.”
Chapter Ten
“Three dead mobsters inside and two dead outside.” In the parking lot, Bogie shook his head to make sense of it all when he and the whole Spencer police force arrived on the scene.
The FBI agents had also called in their people, who were still moments away.
Mac saw that Randi was still comforting the café owner and her daughter. Clutching her toy dog, the little girl looked frightened, but wasn’t at all as hysterical as her mother.
The US Marshal stepped across the parking lot to where Mac was filling in Bogie. “We need to get Leah and her daughter out of here before the media arrives. Cameras are going to be everywhere, and we need to get her to a secure location before that happens.”
“Who’s Leah?” Bogie asked.
Randi nodded over to the café owner. “Her daughter’s name is Sari. With this happening in her café, and Tommy Cruze’s organization involved—”
“There are those who will assume she was involved in some way and retaliate,” Mac finished.
“Can I take them back to Spencer Manor in David’s cruiser?” she asked Bogie. “I’m afraid with members of organized crime in the area—”
Mac clasped his hand on her arm. “Wait a minute.”
“I don’t have a minute.”
“Leah and her daughter are your charges,” Mac said in a low voice. When she tried to argue, he interrupted, “You’re in plain clothes. David’s in his uniform. But when she came running out of the café, she ran to you.” He gestured at the dead assassins. “Who were they after? Tommy Cruze or her? Who’s after her?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Randi glanced over at Leah, who was hugging her daughter as tightly as she could.
His arms folded over his chest, Bogie ordered her to answer. “I’m laying my life on the line to protect these young ladies. I have a right to know who from.”
“The mob,” Randi whispered. “Leah used to be married to someone very high up in organized crime, but he wasn’t in Tommy Cruze’s organization. Her husband was abusive, and she put up with it. After she had Sari, she decided to leave, but knew he’d never let her go. So two years ago she collected everything she could get her hands on, walked into the FBI offices, and offered it all in exchange for a new life for her and her daughter.” She added, “Leah has provided us with invaluable information on all of the inner workings of some of the biggest crime syndicates on the West Coast. That’s why we relocated her in the East.”
Bogie unfolded his arms. “Did this Ginger who gave away Archie’s location also know Leah’s?”
Randi yanked her arm out of Mac’s grip. “She certainly had access to it.”
Mac squinted at Leah and her young daughter. “Don’t you find it very interesting that Cruze chose this café to have breakfast at?”
Randi sighed. “Interesting isn’t the word I was thinking of.”
“I’m escorting all of you back to Spencer Manor.” Bogie turned to Mac. “Will you explain to the chief?”
Mac nodded his agreement.
Bogie called to the German shepherd rolling on his back in the nearby grass to take care of an itch between his shoulder blades. “We’ll take Gnarly with us so he doesn’t contaminate the crime scene.”
“Don’t clean him up,” Mac said. “He took down one of the shooters, so the feds will need to process him for evidence.”
Noting the blood encrusted on Gnarly’s snout and in his mane, Bogie held up his hands in surrender. “I don’t want to be the one to tell Archie that she’s going to have to cancel his appointment with Misty.” He peered down at Mac from under his big, bushy gray eyebrows.
“Archie will understand.”
“But will Gnarly?” Bogie asked.
“Gnarly’s a big dog,” Mac said. “He can handle it.”
Gnarly was glancing back and forth between the two men with a questioning look on his face.
“Are you sure about that?” Bogie asked Mac before turning back to his cruiser.
Randi ushered the café owner and her daughter into Bogie’s cruiser. Ignoring Bogie’s direction for him to sit in the back, Gnarly jumped into the front passenger seat and refused to budge.
Giving up without a fight, Bogie climbed into the driver’s seat and sped off in the direction from which he had come only minutes before.
Mac watched them race across the bridge and roll along Lakeshore Drive. As they disappeared from sight, the van from the morgue and the medical examiner’s car arrived. The medical examiner was covering the dead bodies up with white sheets when Mac went inside to learn about the other murders.
Inside the café, Mac found David trying to gather information from the one remaining witness who had survived the incident.
The round table in the center of the dining room and the six chairs that had surrounded it were overturned. Bodies were scattered on the floor like fallen tin soldiers in a child’s playroom.
Mac recognized the squat form of Tommy Cruze, sprawled on the floor with his arms and legs twisted like a Gumby doll. His eyes and mouth were open wide. A few feet away, his driver-slash-bodyguard was the same. One of his arms was twisted behind his back where he had landed on it. His lifeless eyes gazed up at Mac. Both men’s chins, necks, chests, and abdomens were covered in blood that had spewed out of their mouths and nostrils.
Lying near the coffee counter was the man Mac had seen come in with the assassin.
Someone’s missing.
“Where’s the hit man?” Mac whispered to Special Agent Delaney, who was kneeling next to the mobster’s enforcer. He recalled that less than twenty-four hours before, this same man was pointing a gun at his head.
“What hit man?” Delaney shot him a smirk.
Mac cocked his head at him.
“Richardson says this is everybody,” the special agent said.
Mac gazed down at the body sprawled out at his feet. Unlike Cruze and his bodyguard, the enforcer, who had recruited the hit man tasked with killing Archie, was spotless. There wasn’t a drop of blood on him.
Special Agent Delaney gestured over at the cash register where Alan Richardson was mopping his sweaty bald head with a linen handkerchief while David questioned him. “Maybe you can help your police chief get some useful information out of Cruze’s lawyer.”