Big City Heat

by David Burnsworth

  This event was held at a swanky downtown hotel. One of Darcy’s many sources said Vito and his entourage had checked into a suite. The source also said that with them was a short plump woman. Her description matched Cassie’s.

  The valet didn’t say much when Brack showed up in his turbo Mazda. But every male in the vicinity checked out Tara in her strapless gown.

  Even that, unfortunately, failed to get them front-row parking.

  Tara and Brack found the right ballroom, walked in, and handed the tickets to a pretty twenty-something in a sequined dress. Brack’s goal was to find Vito and confirm whether he had Cassie. The killer’s so-called diplomatic immunity kept him from being arrested, but it didn’t prevent them from harassing him. Or beating him to death, whichever came first.

  Tara, nervous, excused herself and went to the ladies’ room.

  Someone Brack didn’t expect to see was Detective Nichols. He stood at the bar in a tux and Brack joined him.

  “Here goes my evening,” Nichols said.

  Brack said, “Glad you could make it. I didn’t know you were a socialite.”

  Nichols’s smile told him to go pound salt. “I’m working.”

  “Me too.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “First you want my help and now you don’t. Make up your mind.”

  “The Governor’s here,” Nichols said. “If something bad goes down, I will probably lose my job.”

  “Don’t worry,” Brack said, popping a piece of Bubblicious in his mouth. “I’ll make sure to take it outside.”

  “Vito’s not at the event,” he said.

  Apparently Nichols didn’t have Darcy’s intel about Vito’s sighting. Brack thought about telling him this time but elected not to. If the detective was already acting paranoid, that wouldn’t help.

  “I’ll take my chances,” Brack said.

  “Part of the reason I’m here.” Nichols now smiled. “A special team is raiding three of Vito’s stockyards right now.”

  “Stockyards?” Brack asked.

  Nichols said, “What he calls the apartment buildings where he keeps the young girls. As soon as we have them in custody, it’s only a matter of time before one of them sells out their boss.”

  “You weren’t going to share this with me?”

  “It was strictly need to know.”

  Brack walked away from the big city heat.

  The new phone he’d picked up earlier in the afternoon vibrated inside the pocket of his new tux jacket. He pulled it out and saw a text message from Darcy. It read, “Room 7500.”

  Tara returned. He showed her the message and texted back what Nichols said. Then he told Tara about the raids.

  She said, “What’s our plan?”

  “Find the elevators, head to the seventy-fifth floor, and unleash the hounds of hell.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “He’s got Cassie,” Brack said. “If you want out, I’ll understand.”

  “She’s like a sister to me,” Tara said. “I’m in all the way.”

  If Cassie had been standing with them, he’d have suggested that she disown Regan and adopt Tara as her real sister.

  Instead, he looked for the elevators.

  To get to the seventy-fifth floor, the elevator required a specially coded room key.

  “What do you say we get a room?” Brack asked Tara.

  She laughed and touched his collar. “As handsome as you are in your tux, I don’t think tonight is your lucky night.”

  “Too bad for me,” he said. “But we still need to get to the upper floors.”

  She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Lead the way.”

  Hotel guest services had two suites available, both on the eightieth floor. Because his credit card was being tracked by Vito, he didn’t want to tip his hand. Tara charged the room on her card.

  In the elevator, their key card opened the electronic lock that allowed them to travel above the fiftieth floor.

  Brack pressed eighty.

  Tara said, “I thought we wanted seventy-five?”

  “Let’s check out the layout before we venture into harm’s way.”

  And that’s exactly what they did. Assuming the seventy-fifth floor was arranged identically to the eightieth, Vito’s room would lie in the hotel’s northeastern corner. After checking out how their own suite was laid out, they rode the elevator down five floors and got out.

  Lucky for them, the floors were identical in layout. Their plan was for Tara to walk down the corridor toward Vito’s room. If there was a guard, he’d most likely be looking for Brack, not her.

  Brack waited around the closest corner, counting seconds while Tara did reconnaissance. If she didn’t return in two minutes, he was charging the door.

  Forty seconds into his count, he heard a man’s voice start to say, “What—”

  A thump followed. None of it sounded good.

  Brack drew his forty-five and charged around the corner. Tara stood over an unconscious man lying on the floor. The door to the suite opened five inches and a hand extending from it held a pistol. Still moving forward, Brack lowered his gun, brushed past Tara, and crashed into the door. Whoever stood behind it was knocked back into the room. Brack wasted no time smashing his forty-five into the head of the man trying to regain his footing and hang onto the gun. The man failed both tries and fell.

  Darcy’s earlier information said Vito had a short plump woman and two guards with him. That should have been it as far as guards went, Brack thought.

  Except two more rushed him, weapons drawn. A mistake on their part.

  Brack shot both of them and lowered his gun. The three men inside were sprawled on the floor, all bleeding. The man Tara cold-cocked outside still lay there.

  From the walkthrough Tara and Brack had done of “their” room on the eightieth floor, he knew the bedroom was located past the lounge area to the left. A young woman—not Cassie—stepped out of the bedroom, Vito right behind her, a gun to her head.

  Tara gasped.

  Brack aimed his forty-five. “The police are raiding your stockyards as we speak, Vito. I don’t know who this woman is. But if you kill her, we’ll kill you. There’s no win here for you. It’s over.”

  At that moment Tara turned, saw a guard sneaking up behind them, and caught him with an elbow to the throat. He was the unconscious one from outside the door who’d obviously come to. Now he writhed on the ground, his face blue, clutching his throat.

  The action occupied Tara and momentarily distracted Brack. Vito quickly shoved the woman to him and ran out of the suite.

  The woman collided into Brack and they fell to the floor. Brack got to his feet and gave chase, leaving Tara to deal with the woman.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Monday, nine p.m.

  The elevator corridor was empty of people. He pressed the down button and phoned Darcy.

  She answered, “The cops just finished raiding three of Vito’s brothels. Where are you?”

  “Waiting on an elevator. Tonight, here, was another setup. Cassie wasn’t in his suite, but four more of Vito’s goons are now out of commission. He’s on his way down. Probably on the run now. Where are you?”

  “In the lobby with Justin. Wait—Vito is just getting off an elevator. He is heading out the door.”

  “Watch where he goes.” He ended the call.

  The bell dinged, he checked inside the elevator before he stepped into it, then pressed the lobby. It stopped once and a couple got on. With no further interruptions, they were in the lobby in less than a minute. Brack brushed past the man and woman. She said something snarky to him, but he ignored her and ran to the main entrance.

  Outside, Darcy waited with Justin for a valet to bring their car.

  “He just pulled away,” Darcy said, and pointed. �
��He’s in his black Mercedes G.”

  Justin’s new Range Rover pulled to the curb.

  Darcy watched Brack, used to his antics.

  He shouted to Justin, “I need to borrow your wheels,” handed the valet a ten, got in, and sped off.

  If Brack hadn’t been in such a hurry, he might have pondered Darcy’s shaking her head, as if saying “tsk, tsk, tsk” to a naughty boy.

  In the first five seconds as he looked around for the black Benz, Brack guessed she’d warn Justin that he’d likely not see his SUV in one piece again. Too bad, because it was a very nice ride.

  The Supercharged V-8 roared down the avenue as Brack gave the heavy vehicle more speed than seemed logical.

  By the first intersection, his mind focused completely on Vito’s worthlessness. He’d put Mutt and Cassie in the hospital, ruined countless lives, and was a death-causing parasite. He deserved to be taken out, no matter what Brother Thomas thought.

  Brack’s phone buzzed again and he hit the speaker button.

  “Where do you think you’re going with our car?” Darcy asked.

  Ignoring her question, he said, “If he’s on the run, where do you think he would be going?”

  In the background he heard Justin yelling at her to demand that he bring back his Range Rover.

  She said, “Vito owns a small private plane.”

  Brack said, “Lead me to it.”

  The background noise suggested she was arguing with Justin. She came back on the line. “Let me see what I can find out. Just don’t hurt Justin’s car. It’s the love of his life.”

  It could have been the way the speaker amplified her voice, but Brack detected a hint of resentment, or maybe it was resignation.

  The next voice Brack heard was Justin’s. He said, “Hey you—Pelton—you better bring my—”

  Brack hit end call.

  A large pothole jarred him back to the task at hand. So much for taking care of the peckerwood’s wheels. That crater was a doozy.

  Right about now Darcy would be trying to talk Justin out of calling the police, because he dreaded the condition of the “love of his life” after Brack was done with it. If Brack managed to catch Vito before he left for the Caribbean—or wherever—and ended up totaling Justin’s prized possession in the process, he’d buy him a new one. He was already out a $125K Porsche anyway.

  Why he was calculating the cost of vehicles when he should be focused on stopping Vito was not clear to him. Maybe because he couldn’t bear to think that his recklessness had already put two of his friends in the hospital. He wouldn’t stop until he’d delivered payback, expensive German sports cars and peckerwood Range Rovers be damned.

  Brack pulled over and consulted his new iPhone for the addresses of airports Vito could be headed to. The big one, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, probably wasn’t it for a private plane. There were three others, Dekalb Peachtree, Fulton County, and Gwinnett County. He ruled out Gwinnett County as it was too far away, but he wasn’t sure about the other two. A wrong choice would put him on the opposite side of the city from the right choice, with no time left on the clock. As if reading his mind, Darcy called back.

  She said, “I just learned that his plane is at Fulton County.”

  She gave him the address and he entered it in the Range Rover’s GPS. It lay west of downtown.

  “Hurry, because he is really running. His plane is scheduled to leave within the hour.” She ended the call.

  Bless all her contacts.

  A glance at the gas gauge reassured Brack that the peckerwood had recently filled it. A straight drag race between the supercharged Range Rover and Vito’s G63 AMG turbocharged Mercedes would end in a dead heat. Brack could only hope that Vito was in less of a hurry to leave than he was in trying to prevent it.

  Twenty minutes later and five miles from the target airport, what should he see ahead of him but one of those German tank SUVs. Brack pushed the accelerator harder and the Rover rocketed forward. When he pulled even with the suspicious SUV, he saw the color and décor to be spot on. Black paint, dark windows, and black wheels.

  The four-lane road was mostly clear of traffic. With now only about four miles left, Brack had to act fast. A light ahead turned yellow, then red. He ran it. Vito did not. Planting his foot to the floor, Brack accelerated to a hundred miles an hour, then a mile down the road at an intersection he slammed on the brakes and made a U-turn, heading east back toward Vito.

  If now were an updated peacetime World War II, he was driving one of the best trucks Britain made and Vito was driving Germany’s pinnacle in pedestrian SUVs. Brack wondered, not idly, how each would fare in a head-on collision with the other.

  He drove toward Vito on the wrong side of the road and turned on the HID brights. The landscape in front of him exploded with light. The headlights of Vito’s oncoming Benz cut through the glare. Brack rotated the steering wheel from side to side, taking up the whole lane.

  At sixty miles an hour, one mile would take exactly a minute. With both objects traveling toward each other at that velocity, impact would occur in thirty seconds. Brack accelerated to run out the clock.

  They approached each other and the front of Vito’s truck loomed. Brack’s lights revealed Vito was his own driver, jerking the wheel to Brack’s left to avoid impact. Brack mirrored his movements with his own. He saw Vito’s eyes grow wide realizing the inevitable.

  Five seconds before impact, the Range Rover shut down. Brack lost all control of the steering wheel. It locked. The engine cut off and its lack of aerodynamics kicked in, slowing the brick-shaped SUV down dramatically. In the same five seconds Vito’s Mercedes slammed into the curb and bounced up onto the sidewalk. Sparks flew and it crashed into a telephone pole. The Range Rover crawled to a stop, its front wheels gently kissing the same curb, missing the Benz by what had to be the thinnest margin in history.

  Aside from the slight chance of a vehicle malfunction, the only cause for the Range Rover’s complete shutdown could be some kind of theft prevention system. For a second, Brack imagined punching Justin Welcott the third in the mouth. Regardless, he had to check on Vito.

  His door refused to unlock, so Brack crawled over the seats and tried the other doors. Same thing. He decided the rear glass would be the easiest to break so he gave it two solid kicks. It shattered and fell onto the road. He crawled through the opening, grateful for safety glass and its lack of sharp edges.

  Vito’s two-hundred-thousand-dollar rig was a steaming mess. His own evasive steering caused him to hit the telephone pole head on, pushing the front grill into the radiator, and the radiator into the engine. He was still inside. Thanks to the logic programmed into the Merc’s onboard computer, in the event of an accident the doors unlocked. Brack grabbed the handle and hefted the door open. Vito looked dazed and confused, his tanned face red and blotchy from the airbag’s explosion. But otherwise uninjured.

  However, Vito’s condition was about to take a turn for the worse. Brack grabbed his shirt and cocked a fist in time to hear sirens and see a squadron of blue lights fast approaching from the east. That forced an immediate decision. He punched Vito in the face as hard as he could. Three times. He raced back to the Range Rover, crawled back in, and stuck his gun under the front seat. By the time the approaching headlights illuminated his actions, Brack was pulling a now unconscious Vito from the Mercedes and laying him gently on the asphalt.

  In his ear, Brack whispered, “You got off easy just now. I’m not done with you.”

  The police cars pulled to a stop. Two officers helped him up and asked if he was okay. Brack said he was, except for a pulled back. They next asked if he was Brack Pelton. Again he said he was. Then they detained him.

  Turns out that Justin had activated the Range Rover’s customized internal security system via a cell phone call to the vehicle. Doing that had shut everything down before the love of his li
fe became a hunk of scrap steel and aluminum to be recycled. That reflex action Brack attributed to Justin’s selfish denial of public responsibility, not brains. He didn’t seem smart enough to warrant any sort of compliment for foresight.

  What Brack wouldn’t admit even to himself was that Justin’s action had probably saved him from a head-on collision and a trip to the hospital—if he survived the inevitable crash. But he would never acknowledge that truth for the rest of his days.

  Brack stood by the police cruiser in the glare of its rotating blue lights, his hands zip-tied in front of him, and watched Darcy and Justin arrive on the scene by cab. At first he thought the anti-carjacking system on the Range Rover must have told them where he was. Then he remembered that Darcy knew just about everything that went on anywhere, anytime anyway.

  Justin strode toward Brack with his left fist clenched to throw a punch. Brack made a split-second decision to let him get it out of his system and Justin tagged him on the right jaw. That punch probably hurt his own hand more than Brack’s face. Justin balled his fist for another hit, but Darcy grabbed his hand.

  “Stop it!” she yelled.

  The way Darcy looked at Brack he could tell she feared he might hurt her fiancé. Brack gave her a slight head shake, letting her know he wasn’t going to. Instead, he raised his bound hands to his jaw, making a display of his helplessness.

  Detective Nichols spun Justin around and pushed him against the cruiser.

  Brack said, “I’m not going to press charges.”

  Nichols looked at Brack.

  A new thought occurred to Brack. “At least, I won’t if you let me make a phone call right now. Otherwise, well, I might just have to file against your department too.”

  Nichols smirked, understanding how it would look if a civilian punched someone in custody and they let it happen. He cut the binding on Brack’s wrists.

  As Brack walked away, he heard Detective Nichols say, “Don’t leave the scene, Pelton.”

  “No problem, boss.”

  He pulled out his new cell phone.