Vengeance Is Personal (A Colton James Novel, Book 2)

by Thomas DePrima

  The gun seller, Malcolm by name, hesitated for a second, then complied. I knew he could tell from my voice that I wasn't a street punk looking for an easy score. I was hoping he'd think I was a local cop. I stepped out from behind the dumpster and walked up to Malcolm. Pressing my Glock 27 lightly against his neck, I retrieved an envelope from my pocket and slipped it between the thumb and forefinger of his upright left hand. At first, he was slightly startled by the envelope, then realized it was only a piece of paper.

  "Waz up?"

  "I need a handgun for a special job. I've been told you can supply it."

  "By who?"

  "Doesn't matter. I never name names, but the source is reliable."

  "You a cop, man?"

  "No, I'm not NYPD, this isn't a sting, and I'm not looking to rip you off. I just didn't want to get shot before the introductions were complete. My business credentials are in the envelope. Check them out."

  "I gotta put ma hans down."

  "Just don't reach for anything in your clothes and you won't get shot. I'm just hoping for a nice friendly business arrangement. You supply my needs and I'll be gone."

  "And if I don't have what you want?"

  "Then I leave and take my business credentials with me."

  Malcolm lowered his hands, opened the unsealed envelope, and peered in. "Just how many guns you lookin fo, man?"

  "I want a new, never fired, 9mm black-finish automatic. A quality weapon such as a Walther, Sig, Glock, or Browning with a high-capacity clip and four spare high-capacity clips. No Saturday night specials crap. Plus a hundred rounds of quality 147 grain 9mm hollow point or jacketed HP. No reused brass."

  "An what else?"

  "That's it."

  "Man, there's about four grand in this envelope."

  "Call it a tip for a forgetful memory. And— it would be best if the piece had never been registered and couldn't be traced back to you."

  "Nuttin I sell can ever be traced back to me."

  "Do you have what I need?"

  "I thin we can do bizness— but not out here."

  "Then take me to where you conduct business."

  Malcolm relaxed slightly and turned his head to look at me. He didn't appear surprised by my height, but I think the nylon stocking I was wearing over my head earned a double take. "What do I call you?"

  "Never call me."

  "Okay, uh— Mista Neva. Folla me."

  Malcolm led the way to a door on the side of the automotive repair garage. Once inside, he pulled on a dirty shelving unit filled with greasy, used automotive parts. The shelving unit must have had concealed wheels because it moved easily once he'd unlocked it somehow. A set of stairs going downward led to a tunnel, and over the next several minutes we followed a twisting route, winding up in a basement beneath one of the local apartment houses.

  Malcolm immediately walked to a solid-looking cabinet and produced a key to unlock it. As he opened the doors, a wide assortment of handguns lying on shelves was revealed. He reached up and took a box down from an upper shelf and carried it to a workbench. The box appeared to be brand new, and the printing indicated that it was a Sig Saur P229. Malcolm opened the cardboard box to reveal a black, hard plastic case. When he flipped the two snap clips and raised the cover, I saw a brand new Sig P229. He handed me the pistol and a bore light.

  I could tell immediately that the handgun hadn't been fired since leaving the factory. There was an empty thirteen-round Sig clip in the case. While I was checking the pistol, Malcolm retrieved four Ram-Line fifteen-round clips and five boxes of 9mm ammo from another cabinet.

  "You plan'en on statting a small war?" Malcolm asked.

  "Ending one."

  "Thas a good, dependable piece for it, man."

  "Yes, it is. Okay, you've got a deal. Got a bag or sack or something to carry it?"

  "Sure. Need a holster?"

  "No."

  Five minutes later Malcolm was letting me out the side door of the garage. "Come back again, Mista Neva. But next time don't make me shit ma pants."

  As I passed the dumpster, I pulled the nylon stocking off my head. Mia wouldn't miss it because it had a run in it, and I had found it in the trash bin. Still, I didn't discard it. I would leave it where I'd found it in the apartment.

  I didn't have any problems as I walked the block to where I'd parked the rental car. I hadn't dared bring my own car to this neighborhood in the Bronx.

  ~ ~

  In the morning, I pulled on a pair of cotton gloves and disassembled the Sig to clean and lubricate it. I really liked the feel of the handgun grips and the balance, and wished I could use it instead of my Glock service weapon. The 229 was available in 40 caliber, and I'd heard it was used by the Department of Homeland Security, but I had to carry the officially approved weapon. The Glock 23 had a reputation for never jamming, but I'd heard that disputed by some users.

  When I was done, I sat back in the chair to think about my next move. I had the weapon I intended to use and sufficient ammo to take on a small army. If I survived the fight, the Sig, wiped clean of any fingerprints, would end up in the Hudson River or the East River like so many weapons before it that had been used for other than lawful purposes.

  But I had two major problems to overcome. I had sketched floor plans for both Delcona's house and the warehouse where he conducted most of his business, and I knew where his sentries were posted at both locations and generally how many I would encounter when it was time to do the deed. But I didn't have a solid plan of attack. I didn't know how I was going to overcome a dozen armed men and reach Delcona before police arrived in response to reports of gunfire. And if I didn't take out Delcona, I'd have to consider the mission a failure, assuming I even survived the battle with the sentries.

  If Delcona's home had been in the Bronx, the police might not be in any great hurry to arrive before they had plenty of backup, but a nice, quiet residential neighborhood on Staten Island was another matter. Another problem was that the house had more video cameras than a television studio. That probably meant I should forget about an assault on the house and concentrate on a plan for the warehouse where not a single video camera could be seen. It wasn't surprising that Delcona wouldn't want a record of the activities that occurred there.

  Both Delcona's home and his main warehouse were under constant observation by NYPD. I had located the stakeout teams and verified they were watching twenty-four hours a day. Until they removed the teams or at least cut back the hours of observation, I had no chance of getting to Delcona and then getting away afterwards. It was one thing to take on a dozen armed men but quite another to do it and live to fight another day.

  ~ ~ ~

  I sat around for several days, occasionally checking on the stakeout teams watching the warehouse location and wishing they'd end their surveillance while I studied every square inch of the warehouse and tried to formulate a plan of attack that would allow me to reach Delcona and escape unscathed. There seemed little chance that Delcona would come at me or that I'd be able to get at him while the surveillance teams were in place, so I finally decided to spend some time on the child abduction case assigned during my last trip down to FBI Headquarters.

  According to the file, the child was playing in her backyard while her mother washed dishes in the kitchen. The woman had an unobstructed view of the backyard and her daughter but left the sink temporarily when the doorbell rang. A door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman engaged her in conversation for about five minutes, and when she returned to the kitchen, she couldn't see the child from the window, so she walked outside. When she saw no sign of the girl she became frantic and ran around the yard screaming her name as she looked behind every bush and in every possible hiding spot. Determining that the girl was not in the yard, she ran inside and phoned the police.

  A patrol car arrived at the house about twenty minutes later. By then the woman was 'practically a basket case,' according to the responding officer who called for an ambulance after failing to get a
coherent statement about the missing child. The officer was able to learn the husband's phone number at work and had Dispatch contact him. He arrived home as the still hysterical woman was being cared for by the EMTs.

  The police put out an alert on the missing child, but it was hours before the woman was calm enough to give them all the details. They managed to locate the vacuum cleaner salesman a few blocks away from the site of the abduction as he was just finishing an in-home demonstration. A neighbor had called the station to inform police of his location after another neighbor had mentioned they wanted to question the man.

  The police, and later the FBI, determined that the salesman most likely had nothing whatsoever to do with the disappearance. He had been working the area for weeks, giving demonstrations of his product and writing orders. He was married, had two kids of his own, and had no police record. Everything he said checked out.

  Once I had the background information down, I watched the snatch. A woman approached the rear fence using a footpath that ran behind all the houses. There were only houses on one side of the footpath. Beyond that the terrain sloped steeply downward, dropping some thirty feet into a ravine before rising again to a flat area that appeared to be part of a farm or ranch.

  I naturally couldn't hear what the woman said, but she called out something that got the attention of the girl, then held out a red lollipop. The three-year-old girl seemed to know the woman and hurried gleefully over to accept the proffered sweet, then tried to remove the cellophane covering. While the young child struggled to access the candy, the woman reached over the unusually low three-foot-high chainlink fence and lifted the child up and over. It was obviously there only to contain small children or pets. The little girl never cried out or resisted as the woman whisked her away to a car parked on a rutted section of road where the footpath ended. In ten minutes the car was far from the little girl's home. The woman drove calmly and at a sedate pace that would never attract attention. The small girl sat in a child seat in the rear, securely belted in while she enjoyed her lollipop.

  It took me just a few minutes to track the kidnapper back to her birth and learn her real name, but I spent an hour trying to determine the name she was using on the date of the kidnapping. I finally got it from a piece of mail in her apartment. The given name remained the same, but the last name had changed. Perhaps she had married. I needed to find out how she was able to get the small girl to trust her so completely, so I tagged both her and the mother of the girl and then let the gizmo take me to a time they were together. It appeared that the kidnapper had been the child's nanny at one time, and I wondered how that could possibly have escaped the attention of the investigators working the case.

  Once I knew where the girl was, how the crime had been committed, and the identity of the perpetrator, I really only needed one more thing. It was my usual problem. How was I going to explain how I'd solved the case?

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  It would have saved so much time and effort if I could have revealed the truth behind my amazing ability to solve cold cases. But once revealed, I knew I wouldn't retain ownership of the gizmo for very long. Most likely, the government would seize it in the national interest, which meant that the politicians in charge would put it to their own use.

  If the government didn't take it, some quasi-official organization or a major government contractor privy to government secrets would confiscate it by force. And their affiliation with the government, a.k.a. powerful and corrupt politicians, would protect them completely from prosecution. It was obvious that the gizmo's existence would have to remain secret for as long as possible, but I couldn't help wondering what the world would be like if everyone could go down to the local computer store and pick one up.

  I knew I would have to take a trip to visit the kidnapping location and try to find something that would let me close the case, but I didn't want to go. By day, I worked my cases or surveillance of the Delcona mob, and by night I devoted myself fully to Mia. We travelled around the city, attending shows or events after dining, or made love. Most nights we did both. When it came to making love, Mia was insatiable. But I did my absolute best to keep up. Don't get me wrong. The effort certainly wasn't a chore— it was pure pleasure. Since our first outing, Mia and I had spent all our time together on weekends.

  I expected that at some point, Mia would leave. I didn't think she'd leave permanently, but she was used to jet-setting around the globe, following the wealthy and famous to whatever destination had mutually been decided as the flavor of the month. Several times she had wondered wistfully what the weather was like in New Zealand, Fiji, or the Canary Islands. That she'd stayed with me as long as she had was amazing.

  It had taken months to decorate the apartment, but that task was largely done now. Mia continued to pick up small items while she shopped for clothes, and the apartment had taken on the appearance of a home with a lifetime of occupancy rather than the Spartan look it would certainly have had if Mia hadn't come to New York. It was wonderful.

  The clothes Mia had brought with her and the new clothes she had purchased since arriving completely filled one of the two enormous walk-in closets in the master bedroom, and Mia was now filling up the closet where I had my clothes. If she continued to stay with me, I would have to convert one of the spare bedrooms into a clothes closet for her. I didn't complain, of course. She always looked beautiful, and as long as she took her bodyguards when she shopped, I knew she was just as safe as if she had been with me.

  I procrastinated for days, then scheduled a trip to Missouri so I could make it appear as if I had solved the kidnapping case with proper investigation. I also hoped the visit would reveal an evidence trail I could use to satisfy Brigman. In order not to interfere with my weekend with Mia, I made my reservations for early Tuesday morning. I was on the first flight out to the Springfield-Branson National Airport in Springfield, Missouri.

  ~ ~ ~

  I arrived in Springfield just after ten a.m. local time, and after picking up a rental car and wolfing down a couple of burgers from a chain burger place, I checked in with the local PD. I wanted to circumvent any possible problems with neighbors reporting a stranger walking around in the neighborhood. I'd learned that following any major crime, even one that had occurred years earlier, people became much more attuned to the presence of strangers. But I was hardly prepared for my reception at the police department.

  "Special Agent Colton James," the desk sergeant read from my ID as I held it up. Looking at my face, he added, "We've been wondering when you'd show up."

  "Uh, you have? Are you saying you were expecting me?"

  "Well, yes. Sort of. Of course we didn't know exactly when you'd arrive."

  "I don't understand. How could you be expecting me?"

  "The chief started following your cases after you solved that old serial killer case in California. He has a file on everything he could find. There was the bank robbery committed by those three teenagers, then the kidnapping case of that executive. And there were the art robberies in Boston, Philadelphia, and The Netherlands. Recently there was the bank robbery by those NASCAR racing people, but it was the case of the stolen Ferrari that you solved in one day that made the mayor contact the governor and request that he ask the FBI to send you to solve this case. He's a friend of the family that lost their little girl."

  "Oh. I wasn't told that my services had been requested. The kidnapping was simply added to my caseload."

  "We never developed a single solid lead, and the state police investigators never made any progress either. The family never received a ransom note or call, and there were no witnesses. We've had two FBI teams here, and they were never able to find a single reliable clue. You're our last chance to find the missing kid— or her body."

  "I've read the case file. The previous investigators all did a great job. I may not be able to find anything either."

  "Well, at least we'll know the best was here and tried."

  "U
h, okay. I'm going to visit the alleged crime scene now. I just wanted to stop by and let you know I was working in the area."

  "The chief will be sorry he missed you. He's at a city council meeting."

  "Give him my regards, and tell him I'll stop back when I have a chance."

  "Will do, Special Agent James. Good luck."

  I nodded and turned to leave, only then noticing that several nearby police officers were watching me and hanging on every word. I nodded to them as well, then moved towards the front door.

  ~ ~

  I parked the rental car in almost the same spot where the kidnapper had parked, on a side street that dead-ended at what seemed like open farmland. It appeared as if there had once been plans to continue building homes on the other side of the ravine. Where the pavement ended, the road continued another thirty or forty feet.

  Grabbing my overcoat from the rear seat, I walked along the street that ran in front of the houses. The houses didn't present an appearance of great affluence but did seem to be upper-middleclass.

  It was a quiet neighborhood, and there were few people in evidence on this chilly day. That would probably change in a couple of hours when school let out and the school buses began disgorging their cargoes of children.

  When I reached the end of the street and came to another short street to nowhere that ran towards the supposed farmland, I followed it until I reached the footpath that ran along the rear of the houses. It hadn't changed very much from the images I'd seen during the kidnapping four years earlier. I then followed the path until I reached the home of the kidnap victim. The backyard fence still looked the same, except that it had recently been painted. The home was well maintained as well. A young child's swing set, made from some sort of plastic, sat unused off to the side of the yard. It was slightly faded from the sun but would probably last forever, unlike the steel sets of generations past that began to rust in a few years.

  As I stared at the house and yard, a woman emerged and strode purposefully towards me. She was carrying a small child of about four. As she reached me, she said, "Are you Mr. James?"