Big City Heat

by David Burnsworth

Darcy approached their table. “I see you guys didn’t bother waiting.”

  Mutt swallowed half a cow, smiled, and said, “You know how disrespectful Opie can be.”

  Back-doored by his own comrade, Brack said, “You look great.”

  And she did. Blonde hair pinned off her neck, light blue V-neck t-shirt, cream-colored walking shorts, and sandals. Minimal, if any, makeup.

  “Thanks.”

  Brack slid over and she sat next to him. A burger, fries, and the fourth drink sat in a tray that he pushed in front of her.

  “What have you found out?” she asked.

  “I found out Opie here can still do some damage.”

  She said, “I heard it was Townsend. That guy deserved a lot worse.”

  Brack looked at Mutt. “That’s what I said.”

  Darcy took a sip of her drink. “Since you’re being so professional and all, what else did you gumshoes learn?”

  Brack didn’t reply.

  Mutt didn’t reply.

  Finally, Darnel said, “We were kind of hoping you could tell us where to go next.”

  Darcy looked at him, then Mutt, then Brack. “I don’t know how you guys handle tying your shoes every morning.”

  “I usually wear sandals,” Brack said.

  She smirked. “Not in this town.” Pulling out her phone, she got up from the table and made a call.

  Darnel asked, “Is she always this friendly?”

  Mutt guffawed.

  Brack cleared his throat. “Um, wait ’til we have to ask her for bail money. Then she’s a real peach.”

  Darnell said, “Sounds like you three have a lot of history.”

  Brack’s sidekick answered. “You could say that. See, that foxy lady over there love a good story. Anything to get her pretty face on the television. Me and Mr. Opie here, we make news. She helps us along, but when the bullets start flyin’ and the bad guys start dyin’, it’s us droppin’ the hammer.”

  Brack said, “You’ve been working on that last line for a while, haven’t you?”

  “That obvious?”

  Darcy came back to the table.

  “Is what obvious?”

  “Uh, how many times we gotta ask for your help,” Mutt said.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “I moved six hours away from Mr. Romeo and here I am right back where I left off. But I don’t mind. Vito just walked into the City Club.”

  Brack stood. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Easy there, Opie. We gotta problem.”

  “We had a problem,” Brack said. “Now thanks to our favorite weather girl, we’re down one.”

  “I appreciate the compliment,” Darcy said, “but what Mutt is trying to say is that we can’t simply walk into the City Club.”

  Darnel said, “It’s the most exclusive club in Atlanta.”

  “How much will it take?” Brack asked.

  Darcy put her phone in her purse. “I know you want to show off how much money you have, Mr. Ex-Porsche, but we are talking the nine-figure crowd. That means a one and eight zeroes in the bank just to shake hands.”

  “Okay,” Brack said, “so how do we get to him?”

  “I’m thinking,” she said.

  Mutt said, “You two are worse now than when you was back in Charleston.”

  Instead of replying, and because he craved a cigar, Brack pulled out his pack of gum and stuck a piece in his mouth.

  Darcy watched Brack chew. “I have got to ask. What’s with the Bubblicious?”

  “Opie here realized that maybe all that smoking ain’t too good for him.”

  “Huh?” She looked totally amazed.

  Brack’s favorite sidekick pulled out his vapor stick and took a few puffs. “Tara give him one of her personal trainer sessions. From what I hear, someone puked his guts out at the end.”

  She laughed. “Really?”

  “Can we get back to the task at hand?” Brack asked.

  Darnel said, “Well, to Brack’s credit he matched my sister set for set for two hours. Most men can’t hang with her for more than thirty minutes before they drop out. One of the other trainers there told me it was the last bit on the stair machine that did him in.”

  “But,” Darcy said, “that got you to stop smoking?”

  “I’m not going to say that. All I’ll say is that every time I think I want a cigar, I remember my head in that trash can.”

  Darcy sat back. “I have to take that gal to lunch.”

  “Whatever,” Brack said. “So how do we get to Vito now?”

  Darcy looked at her watch. “It’s afternoon and I have today’s deadline to meet. Let’s pick this up tomorrow.”

  While Brack licked his wounds in his hotel room, his cell phone buzzed. He recognized the number and answered. “Hello, Shana from Gecko Row.”

  She said, “I heard Mindy and Kai are dead.”

  No “hello” or “how’s it going.” None of her normal flirting. None of his either.

  Brack inhaled and exhaled. “Yes.”

  A long pause.

  He said, “Shana? Are you still there?”

  She said, “This started out fun, you know. I liked you and I liked that you were giving Vito and his thugs a hard time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t think anyone I knew would actually die.”

  He said, “You knew the girls?”

  “Only to look at them. But still, no matter what they were doing, hooking or stripping or whatever, they didn’t deserve to die.”

  Certainly not just because I wanted to talk to them, Brack thought. He simply said, “I agree.”

  She said, “Am I in danger?”

  The six-million-dollar question. Brack thought about all the ways he could answer the question. In the end, the truth was the only answer that would protect her. He said, “If Vito finds out you were talking to me, then yes.”

  He heard a gasp.

  “Shana?” he said again.

  “I’m still here,” she said.

  “The best thing for you to do is get out of town,” he said. “At least until this blows over. Do you have any place you can go?”

  “My mother lives in Florida,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about moving down there and starting over anyway.”

  Brack said, “Pack light. Leave as soon as you can. Do you have money?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have enough to get there, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  Another pause.

  “Shana,” he said, “I want to thank you for everything you did for me. You didn’t have to do any of it, but you did. I’m not with the police, but I believe I’m on the right side of this one. No matter what happens, you were trying to do the right thing. Remember that.”

  He heard her sniffle through the phone. “I know. I can’t believe I ever got into the situation where I had to work for a man like Vito.”

  “You can change that right now,” he said. “And if you ever get to Charleston, look me up.”

  “You know, Mr. Pelton, I might just do that.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sunday, eight a.m.

  A buzzing cell phone woke Brack from a deep sleep. He sat up in bed, looking around trying to figure out where he was. The white room came into focus and he remembered—still crashing at the pet-friendly hotel.

  He answered the call and Darcy said, “We need to hit the road. I’m on my way with Mutt. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  “What happened to ‘good morning’?”

  His only answer was silence because Darcy had hung up. With time for a quick shave and shower, he dressed in his old shorts and upgraded to a decent polo, swallowed a couple of vitamins, and gargled with Listerine before heading out.

  Mutt waited for him in the lobby,
talking with Darcy. When Brack joined them, Mutt said, “You better pack somethin’ beside that pocket knife for this one.”

  Brack went back to his room, stuck the forty-five down the waistband of his shorts, and grabbed three full clips before returning.

  When he returned, he noticed Darcy held a coffee and a McDonald’s bag. “Good morning.” She handed Brack the coffee and bag. “You can eat in the car.”

  “Hooray!” Brack took the offered meal. “Breakfast and guns. This ought to be good.”

  “It isn’t,” Darcy said. “But we’ll make the most of it.”

  He and Mutt followed her outside to her undercover car, Brack chewing a mouthful of Egg McMuffin. “Make the most of what?”

  She turned to them. “The airport isn’t just one of the busiest places for travelers. It’s also the hub for human trafficking in the U.S.”

  “No kidding.”

  Her eyes, which changed color depending on her mood, were now a gray-green. Ignoring him again, she said, “Johns fly in, are chauffeured to some location to rendezvous with a sex slave, then fly out.”

  “Please tell me Regan isn’t mixed up with this somehow.”

  “Not sure,” she said. “But Vito is.”

  Brack finished off the sandwich and took a gulp of coffee, thinking this meant a whole lot of people were involved.

  “Ready to get in?” She gestured to the Honda.

  “You’ve got a line on one of the johns, don’t you?”

  A smile crept across her pretty face. “And I’m going to love burning him with this.”

  Brack downed the rest of the coffee and tossed the empty cup and balled-up sandwich wrapper in a trash can at the curb. He opened the passenger door and sat. “This is a little bigger than that Chinese brothel sting back in Charleston, you know?”

  Darcy had broken that story and Brack had killed a few of the hoods running the joint.

  “I know.”

  “Good,” he said. “We just need about a thousand more of us.”

  Darcy said, “Don’t be so dramatic. All we’re going to do today is get pictures and have a little discussion with the john.”

  Brack asked, “You got a tracker on him or something? I mean, the Atlanta airport isn’t a small place.”

  Mutt said, “I got a line on the one pickin’ up the john.”

  “How’d you get that exactly?”

  “Exactly by him bein’ one of my own customers,” Mutt said. “Fool got drunk and started gabbin’ to me last night. Lucky the place was otherwise empty. I figured you was asleep, Opie, so I called Wonder Woman over here early this mornin’.”

  “The john’s flying in this morning?” Brack asked.

  Darcy said, “We have an hour to get set up.”

  And that was what they did. Perched in her Honda, they staked out the chauffeur’s apartment. The Lincoln Town Car he drove was a polished black chariot of sin parked in front of his unit. He’d mentioned to Mutt an arrival time for the john. They calculated that he’d leave about an hour before the flight touched down. Their calculation was within five minutes.

  The chauffeur, a small, wiry African-American man with a mustache going gray, exited his apartment shortly after they arrived. Wearing a dark suit and tie, a white shirt, and polished shoes, he got into the Lincoln, backed it from its spot, and pulled out of his apartment complex.

  Darcy let a few cars get between him and them before giving chase. Brack wondered why Mutt thought they needed the heaters, given the small stature of the driver, though he found it best to err on the side of too many guns rather than too few. He’d had sufficient experience with the latter to desire never having to relive that again.

  A sweet aroma filled the car and Brack looked back to find Mutt vaping. He asked, “There’s no other flavor besides vanilla?”

  Mutt said, “I like it.”

  Brack thought Cassie had done her darnedest to domesticate Mutt. A haircut, tooth bridge, and fancy clothes had cleaned up the exterior along with the switch from cigarettes to vapor. Not a whole lot could be done about the rest though. Like Brack. They were both tomcats ready to scrap. And Brack loved him for it.

  Darcy said, “We’re on the job here, gentlemen. Why don’t we try to focus?”

  Brack said, “This is how we roll.”

  From the backseat, Mutt cackled and said, “How!”

  They followed the Lincoln through traffic all the way to Hartsfield Airport, and then to “Arrivals.” Mutt’s bar patron pulled to the curb and waited. They drove past the Town Car and two more taxis, then grabbed an open spot. Brack got out and walked back toward the limo with his cell phone out, snapping pics as discreetly as he could. A dark-skinned man in a sharp houndstooth sport coat approached the Lincoln. The man looked around, spotted Brack, and stared. Brack passed him, kept walking, and entered the airport, the man’s image now immortalized in digital.

  Once inside the terminal, Brack reversed course, upped his pace to a brisk walk past three baggage-claim conveyors to the next exit, pushed the doors open, and hopped in Darcy’s car, which had moved ahead when he’d gotten out.

  As soon as he was seated she took off. Good thing his feet had cleared the doorsill because her acceleration slammed his door shut with no effort on Brack’s part.

  “He spotted you, didn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yep. But I got his picture.”

  “This isn’t good, Brack,” she said. “You’ve been compromised.”

  “We don’t know that,” Brack said, although he suspected he might regret his words.

  Mutt said, “Right now, we gotta stay with that Lincoln. I don’t know where they’re goin’.”

  Darcy kept the target car in sight. Because of its heavily tinted back window, they couldn’t see inside the car. The driver headed for the center of town, but thirty minutes into the trip he made an unexpected turn down a one-way side street. They followed. The Lincoln stopped in the middle of it. Too late they saw this street was more like an alley. Worse, parked cars on each side meant they couldn’t go around.

  Darcy slowed and looked in her rearview mirror. “We’ve got a problem.”

  Brack looked back and saw a Chevrolet Tahoe approaching and yelled, “Throw it in reverse and ram him.”

  “What?”

  Mutt pulled out his pistol. “Do it! And with your head down.”

  Brack pulled his forty-five, opened the window, and fired two shots in the air.

  The Tahoe stopped, the two front doors opened, but no one emerged. Yet.

  Darcy put the Honda in reverse and accelerated toward the SUV.

  The two men in the Tahoe fired at them.

  The Accord’s rear window shattered in a spider-web pattern.

  Mutt and Brack twisted in their seats to return fire and unloaded their weapons into the Tahoe.

  Two seconds later Darcy rammed it.

  The force jarred Brack and he bounced off his seat and slammed against the dash.

  He slid a full clip into the forty-five, opened his door, and jumped out rolling, attempting to draw the gunfire away from Mutt and Darcy. His back let him know it was not in any kind of shape for this maneuver.

  He rolled to one of the parked cars, ducked behind its trunk, and raised up briefly to fire into the Tahoe. His shot caught one of the men and the force of the bullet nearly took his face off. The man went down.

  The other one in the smashed SUV reversed out of the alley.

  Brack looked at the Accord. Darcy and Mutt appeared to be okay. The Lincoln was gone. In its place was another vehicle, an F-150, coming up fast the wrong way. Brack aimed and shot at the truck’s tires, blowing one out. It veered right and crashed into several parked cars.

  Mutt must have understood what was happening because he opened the rear door, leaned out, and fired shots into the pickup.


  The front-seat passenger got out of the F-150 with bad news. Real bad news. Like a freaking submachine gun.

  Brack emptied his clip at the truck. Mutt ducked back inside the Accord.

  With a click, the forty-five told Brack it was empty. One more clip left. In less than two seconds he ejected the empty and jammed in the fresh.

  Without taking his eyes off the man with the submachine gun, Brack heard Darcy continue reversing the Honda out of the street, now clear of the Tahoe she’d rammed. It had disappeared.

  The man with the submachine gun hadn’t. Brack took several shots at him, attempting to provide cover so Darcy and Mutt could escape. But Brack was too late.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Darcy pushed the accelerator to the floor, her head and shoulder facing the rear as she steered. The Honda shot backwards. The car’s little engine screamed, its transmission whining for mercy. The only thought in Darcy’s mind was Brack. The lug was on foot in the alley. But he knew how to take care of himself in these situations. That was for sure.

  With that machine gun trained on them, she and Mutt were sitting ducks if she didn’t get them out of there. Almost reaching the end of the alley, she slowed when the Tahoe returned and blocked her in, maneuvering so its length sat roughly across the entry to prevent escape.

  “Ram him again,” Mutt yelled. “Don’t let up.”

  The driver got out and peppered the back of the Honda with bullets.

  Mutt returned fire through the already busted back window.

  Darcy didn’t like any of this. She closed the distance to the Tahoe, and at the last moment, cut the wheel left and caught the front fender of the truck and rear quarter panel of a parked car. The impact jarred them in their seats. And to her surprise, the impact moved the SUV. But not enough.

  Mutt fired his gun at its driver, yelling to her, “Get out and run!”

  Darcy pulled her thirty-two. “You first.”

  “Dammit, girl! Git!”

  She crawled over the console and opened the passenger door.

  “Mutt,” she said, “as soon as I get out, you follow. I’ll cover. We both need to get out of here.”

  At that moment a muzzle pressed against her head.