Out of Promises

by Simon Leigh

  Cook kept his mouth shut, the numbing feeling from his rope tied hands pulsing in his wrists.

  ‘Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘He doesn’t tell me things like that. He keeps a close circle of his most trusted men. I’m not trusted with such information.’

  ‘Yes. I know that, but I asked if you know something, not whether he told you. Did you hear anything before he was taken?’

  ‘How do you know he was taken?’

  Rodriguez backslapped him again. ‘I’m asking the questions.’

  That one hurt more than the previous one. ‘No,’ he cried. ‘I haven’t heard shit.’

  ‘I need a date and time. You’re going to tell me what you know. A lot of drugs and weapons are in that deal.’

  ‘Like a modern day vigilante, right?’

  Rodriguez smiled. Cook braced for another hit, but it never came. He said, ‘Look, I’m trying to help. I want Matherson off these streets. The drugs and weapons too. I know it’s going down at the Truman Building.’

  Cook said, ‘That’s too risky for any deal to happen. There’s no escape and it’s too public.’

  ‘Our intel is reliable. They have an apartment there only I don’t know what name it’s under.’

  Cook remained quiet.

  Rodriguez grew impatient.

  A cell vibrated. ‘Keep an eye on him,’ he ordered and walked away to take the call.

  Cook looked around, wondering if this is where it was all going to end, wondering if his life had been worth it. All the loyalty he’d given for it to just turn to shit in a matter of hours.

  Rodriguez came back. ‘Looks like we have a date, time and location. It’s tonight so I’m in a hurry. If you have any other information that may be useful to me, now is the time to say.’

  ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A moment’s silence. Then he asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want shit like you on the streets any longer. I used to be a smuggler, you know. It is partly my fault that the streets are how they are. Then came Northbrook and everything that went on there. I just thought enough is enough.’

  ‘I heard rumours about that.’

  ‘I don’t want to get into it.’ He took out a pistol, a Glock. ‘Do you know what it feels like, remembering you were part of one of the most atrocious and barbaric acts of violence this city has ever seen? Something like that never leaves you.’

  Cook wriggled, his arms and shoulders aching. ‘Please don’t kill me. I can help you stop Matherson.’

  Rodriguez pointed the Glock at him. ‘I doubt that. I offered you a chance for help and you ignored it.’

  ‘Stop! Please stop,’ he begged.

  Rodriguez took no notice.

  He wept. He didn’t want to die. If he was to go it would be with his friends and family, not in some empty warehouse.

  Rodriguez pressed the trigger.

  ‘I’m a cop!’ Cook shouted.

  Rodriguez stopped. ‘What?’

  He let out a long breath of relief. ‘I’m a cop. I’ve been undercover with Matherson. My real name is David Leach.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY EIGHT

  So there she was, lying flat out and barely conscious on a single bed in a locked room. They’d left her fully clothed, although she had been relieved of Bill’s gun. She stayed there for a moment while her headache faded, thankful to be in one piece. It was some blow they’d dealt and she didn’t want another.

  The judge’s gavel she felt at the underground parking lot had struck down, sentencing her to her own prison cell.

  She figured they must be saving her for something. She had to get out. She had to get away. Sitting up on the bed, she scanned the room. It was small and cramped and belonged to someone who didn’t care for health or hygiene. Musty air in need of ventilation loitered and the décor needed work with wallpaper coming away from the walls. At the side of the bed was a small chest of drawers with some perfume bottles nestled on top. At first, she assumed the room belonged to a lady. But she recognized the bottles; they had identical marks from years of use and refills. Lifting one for a closer look, she found a letter beneath it with her address on.

  Holy shit.

  Someone had been in her apartment, intruding on her very soul. She opened the envelope and read the numbers: five, five, five, six, five, three, and seven. In another draw she found her own gun with its clip missing and some of her underwear.

  What the fuck?

  Goosebumps raced over her body. She put the gun and letter in her pocket, not wanting to touch her underwear again, and looked around for an escape.

  Throwing back the curtains revealed a window that didn’t open. There was no part of it that could. It was just a solid pane of glass.

  Shit.

  If it was open, she’d be down the drive and near the road by now. One way or another, she had to get through that glass.

  She noticed the stolen car still outside, only without any keys, she couldn’t take that. Her feet were the best chance she’d have to evade any chasers. A lower roof above the front door would give her an advantage if she decided the window was the best opportunity. And it was. She couldn’t exactly run through the house.

  The first thing to do was block the door. Smashing the window would draw attention she didn’t need or want. Quickly grabbing the bed, she dragged it to the door. Being heavy, it made more noise than she liked.

  Spinning around, she kicked the window. It was solidly built all right, not even a scratch. She had to try something better.

  The perfume bottles.

  They were heavy and made of thick glass.

  Perfect.

  Footsteps crept up the stairs, one after the other like a beating heart. Thud, thud, thud. Each one louder than the last, emulating her own heart pumping away like a never ending drum. She figured she had two minutes max to get out of there before they’d tear her apart.

  One more time, she kicked the window without success when a key frantically turned in the lock followed by someone slamming their body into the door.

  Bang.

  Heaving a perfume bottle at the window, a crack appeared.

  Bang.

  With the next bottle, a hole appeared.

  By now, Cyrus had the door open a little, pushing and pulling violently as he tried to dislodge the bed behind it, yelling in a high pitched desperate wail, ‘Valerie.’

  His voice made her shudder as it tore at her innards. She kicked at the window again and again like a hammer until her foot ached. Then she changed to her other foot. The hole was almost big enough to fit through with just a couple of inches left to remove. Then the bed gave way and he scrambled to get over.

  She picked up perfume bottles from the floor, hurling them at him, the solid glass bouncing from his head.

  She ducked through the window.

  Behind her, Cyrus was still fighting his way to her, dragging his body over his bed. ‘Valerie, please don’t go.’

  She hit the lower roof under the window and slid along the ice to the end, falling and hitting the ground hard. It hurt, but she sucked it up and ran toward the road.

  ‘Valerie!’ he bellowed from the window.

  Few cars on the go slow carefully evaded the icy patches in each direction. The neighbourhood was pleasant, but she was unfamiliar with it. She knew only one way out, which was the way they came.

  She was cold. The afternoon air had gotten colder through the day. The skies were almost clear and the day was starting to draw in. On the horizon was a large white cloud, bringing with it another heavy snowfall. She had to get somewhere warm and safe before it fell. She ran.

  It was more of a slow jog, like a child finding his or her feet for the first time. She lost some footing more times than she liked, not making it very far until a hand grabbed her arm from her right, jamming it up her back while another hand covered her mouth. She was yanked from the sidewalk and into a nook between two houses.

&nb
sp; ‘Don’t scream,’ said Bill.

  She nodded.

  Gently releasing his hand on her mouth and keeping her other arm where it was, he whispered in her ear, ‘I’m sorry for everything.’

  ‘Bill, let me go.’

  ‘Just hear me out.’

  ‘You’ve said all you need to. If you have any decency left in you, you’ll release me.’

  The moment his hand let go of her arm, she spun around and planted a right hook into his face. ‘Irene warned me about you. All my senses warned me about you. But I just followed you because I was gullible enough to believe the shit you dribbled.’

  He held his face. He knew it was over. The charade had come to an end. He took his gun from his pocket.

  ‘You’re going to shoot me now?’

  ‘Take this.’

  She snatched it from him.

  ‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

  ‘Nowhere that concerns you,’ she said, hitting him with the gun this time. Her blood was boiling in the cold air on that Thursday afternoon. Shooting him would draw too much attention, though she felt like doing worse. Mutilating him in the slowest and most painful way possible was the top choice.

  While he was down and dazed, she kicked him in his gut before leaving him on the ice.

  She ran for almost two miles where she entered a quaint neighbourhood, taking forever over the slippery ground. She wanted to go on, but this was as far as she could manage before passing out. The cold was biting her throat with every breath as rusty razorblades slowly spread into her lungs. On a bench outside a twenty four seven store, she took a seat and was thankful for it.

  What now?

  Lucy was basically all she had left. She knew she’d be at her parents’ house, so that was where she headed: Bakersfield.

  After buying a bottle of water from the store, she hailed a cab.

  CHAPTER FIFTY NINE

  Baker looked at his watch: 16:00. The light was fading. He was standing with McGowan in the chill outside Hellman’s Business Centre. The area had been cordoned off with tape and all that remained were the two of them, some uniformed officers guarding the entrance, and the remnants of the employees from the other businesses being questioned. Matherson’s office had been left an empty shell with almost everything removed and packed away to the station.

  McGowan said, ‘We need to find the missing ledger pages.’

  ‘For all we know one of the officers who searched his office has it. Who knows who’s bent and who’s not.’

  ‘Can’t exactly search everybody.’

  ‘I guess we’ll have to wait for lab results on what we did find,’ said Baker, just as his cell rang. He answered it and wandered off away from McGowan like he was some outcast that didn’t belong.

  McGowan knew it was the undercover, but he also knew Baker had him locked away in his head. He just needed to find the combination. He watched him anxiously chatting away getting excited over something and he felt envious, almost jealous, though he understood it. He also understood that his years of loyalty had left him an outsider and with him coming from the times when everybody was crooked, he was regarded as damaged goods, with nobody doing anything to prove otherwise.

  Baker came back. ‘We have a lead.’

  ‘Yeah? Your undercover guy was it?’

  ‘Give it a rest.’

  ‘Come on, I know you have one. We’re together on this so why are you leaving me out?’

  ‘Safer that way.’

  McGowan didn’t respond. Was it safer or just misguided paranoia?

  ‘We need to hurry, Matherson’s been taken from The Golden Palace restaurant and I have details of a major deal going down tonight in the heart of the city at The Truman Building.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Not bullshit.’

  ‘You sure it’s reliable? Seems a bit farfetched, somewhere so exposed like that.’

  ‘My source has never let me down before. It’s as reliable as it’s ever going to be. It also proves Matherson wasn’t here and Bill and his friend were alone.’

  ‘So they were alone,’ he said, dismissively. ‘Doesn’t mean shit. They’re working for him.’

  ‘Come on, we need to get back to the station. Send someone to speak to the owner of the restaurant.’

  McGowan opened the car door. ‘You have to admit, the Truman Building is a bit public isn’t it?’

  ‘Will you stop questioning it? The intel is sound.’

  ‘I just don’t want you to have egg on your face if you’re hanging too many hopes on this guy.’

  Bakersfield, a quiet suburb of Southbrook renowned for its expensive housing and high class population. It was basically the place to come when you retire, to live the high life before death inevitably takes hold. It was the kind of place Valerie wouldn’t feel at home with, no matter which part of her life brought her here.

  For safety, she left the cab three streets away and walked to Lucy’s parents’ house.

  With darkness quickly encroaching on that late winter afternoon, her weary legs struggled to get into any kind of rhythm while the snowflakes she’d been expecting fluttered gently to the ground.

  Right now the neighbourhood was peaceful, but soon enough the rush hour would filter its way here and turn into another jam of cars bottlenecking their way along the quiet streets to avoid the tailbacks on the main drags.

  Each house she passed had a good amount of land bordered by hedges and fences and each house had a short driveway. Some had gardens, some had stones and cement, some were paved, but they all had one thing in common: the stars and stripes gently flapping in the wind.

  Patriotic.

  She spotted the house that Freddie had explained in great detail through one of his many conversations about the love of his life. It had two levels, was made of brick and still looked solid and new, even now, forty years since it was built during a city restoration and expansion project.

  All the lights were off.

  She held back, scanning around, casting her gaze at every nook, window, and car she could see. Few lucky people who’d made it home before the rush were unloading their cars and kids ran around throwing snowballs without a care. Nothing of concern was happening so she moved up the driveway and around to the right where she was met by a seven foot high gate built with such precision that there were no gaps to look through and she couldn’t see over it. So she scaled it, up and over to the back of the property where she found something unexpected.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Bill didn’t know whether to run or not. What had he done? Fucked it all up is what he’d done and he just hoped that wherever Valerie was, she was safe. If he chose to run then he knew two things would happen: he’d be found and his sister would be dead. And then he’d be joining her.

  He drifted solemnly through the door to meet Preston in the living room with Cyrus beside him, standing to attention, ready to serve his master.

  ‘Preston...’ Bill began.

  ‘Where’s Valerie?’

  ‘She’s gone. I couldn’t find her.’

  ‘She’s gone has she? And you didn’t see her at all?’

  He was uncomfortable for sure, feeling the onset of sweat wetting his forehead.

  ‘I think you’re lying. You have a nice bruise forming on your cheekbone.’

  Bill said, ‘Why didn’t you send your lackey out after her?’

  Cyrus stepped forward, but Preston held him back.

  Bill grinned and felt a sense of satisfaction seeing the animal tamed. ‘Does he sit too?’

  ‘Bill, I sent you out after her, not Cyrus. You know he can’t run with his leg as it is. You know, when you should have helped him in Freddie’s garage.’

  This time Cyrus smiled.

  ‘Whatever, she’s gone.’

  ‘Because of you. Got a thing for the girls haven’t you? First that bitch informant, then Lucy and Chloe, now Valerie.’

  ‘Lucy and Chloe?’

  ‘That’s right. They’re he
re in the basement with Lenka and, after some forceful negotiating, Lucy told me how you helped her. How you smashed the van from the road.’

  ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘Go and see for yourself.’ He clicked his fingers.

  Cyrus rushed towards him, walking straight into his fist.

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ Bill said, hitting him again.

  The blow hurt him, but Cyrus came at him again, tackling him to the ground.

  Bill fought and wriggled to get free when Cyrus head butted him, busting his nose.

  Preston clapped in his wheelchair. ‘Take him to the others.’

  Cyrus dragged him out of the room and along the hall to the open basement door. From Cyrus’s grip, Bill looked down into the depths of the home, looking into darkness.

  Cyrus pushed him passed the stair lift, through the door at the bottom, and into the basement where they found Lucy sitting against the wall with a bruised face, black eye and cut lip. She was holding Chloe, who was unharmed. Matherson was tied to a chair beneath the light bulb and Lenka was standing, watching. She stared at them with the stern, Russian smoulder that was so common to that part of the world, speaking good English with a thick Russian accent that would usually make Bill grin, but not this time. ‘Finally,’ she said and started laughing. ‘Matherson has been trying to persuade me to come back to him.’

  Cyrus laughed with her and they left them alone, locking the door.

  CHAPTER SIXTY ONE

  What Valerie found behind Lucy’s parents’ home was the body of a dog, taken out silently by a knife. Beside it, some dry bloody footprints lead into the house. She also found blood on the door handle. Her stomach sank.

  Shit.

  Through the window she could see a large kitchen with a dining table in the centre. Work surfaces and appliances filled the edges, broken by an archway in the centre of the far wall filtering into the main living area.

  Pulling her jacket over her hand, she pushed the handle down. The door swung open and a waft of heat warmed her. Taking out her gun, she walked inside pushing the door carefully behind her.