Praise for Police and Thieves:
“Spare prose and minimal embellishments make this excellent lone-wolf entry shine. If your readers clamor for Richard Stark’s Parker novels, then Bridger is your new antihero to recommend. With vigilante action and riveting lead, Hunt’s book brings in the great elements of a Donald Westlake (aka Richard Stark) or Marcus Sakey (At the City’s Edge) piece. Buy, read, and recommend highly.”
—Library Journal, *starred review*
Praise for Get Maitland:
“… reads like The 39 Steps crossed, as the title suggests, with Get Carter. The usual beautifully judged action sequences are spiced by some piquant fish-out-of water situations.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Goodbye Sister Disco:
“Hunt unspools the gripping plot at breakneck speed. Not a word seems wasted, whether in breathtaking action sequences or in back-story sketches of book’s various players.”
—Wall Street Journal
Praise for The Betrayers:
“Fast, gritty, and convincing. Crime fiction at its best.”
—Lee Child
“Intricate, completely convincing, and scorching hot, The Betrayers is reminiscent of the best of Elmore Leonard… . Yes, it’s that good.”
—George Pelecanos
EPIGRAPH
ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE | SIX | SEVEN | EIGHT | NINE | TEN | ELEVEN | TWELVE | THIRTEEN | FOURTEEN | FIFTEEN | SIXTEEN | SEVENTEEN | EIGHTEEN | NINETEEN | TWENTY | TWENTY-ONE | TWENTY-TWO | TWENTY-THREE | TWENTY-FOUR | TWENTY-FIVE | TWENTY-SIX | TWENTY-SEVEN | TWENTY-EIGHT | TWENTY-NINE | THIRTY | THIRTY-ONE | THIRTY-TWO | THIRTY-THREE | THIRTY-FOUR | THIRTY-FIVE | THIRTY-SIX | THIRTY-SEVEN | THIRTY-EIGHT | THIRTY-NINE
Preview: REINHARDT’S MARK
COPYRIGHT
“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on. Policemen are not very kind to one another at all. I get involved in the shit and there’s three hundred guys saying, ‘I would have done this and that and the other thing.’ Terrible. I stopped doing it myself a long time ago. But I used to do it. Now I say, ‘If you weren’t there, then don’t say nothing, because you don’t know what it was like.’”
—Anonymous police officer, interviewed in Cops, by Mark Baker
“But the law must keep its promises.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Sanjay Baya just wanted to get his haircut. But when it was done, Johnny asked him for a favor. Sanjay said, “What is it?” And thus began one of the longest days of his life.
Johnny said he wanted Sanjay to come with him to test drive a BMW he was thinking of buying. Sanjay said he was on his lunch hour and really should be getting back to work.
Johnny said, “But you know so much about cars. Please go for a test drive with me.”
Sanjay was wary. He had always liked Johnny. Johnny was funny, of course, but he had never made a pass at Sanjay. Sanjay worked out a lot — five nights a week at the gym and he had the build to prove it. But he had made it clear over and over to Johnny that he liked girls.
Sanjay said, “Just a short drive, okay?”
Sanjay rode with Johnny in his old Ford Explorer to a run down auto dealership in South St. Louis. Sanjay stood in the lot with his hands in his pockets while Johnny conferred with a couple of rough looking Bosnians. Scary, pale skinned dudes with greasy black hair and waist length leather coats. Sanjay didn’t like them one bit.
They got into a 1997 BMW 740iL, Johnny behind the wheel, Sanjay in the passenger’s. They talked about the car as Johnny drove. Sanjay could see that Johnny liked it and he agreed that the asking price was reasonable. But, Sanjay noted aloud, the maintenance on these things was exorbitant. A transmission replacement alone was six grand. He didn’t think Johnny would have that kind of money. Sanjay was diplomatic about it, not telling Johnny he was poor, but telling him still he should have the car thoroughly examined by a certified BMW mechanic. Though he couldn’t see these Bosnians being too understanding about that.
“Yeah, sure,” Johnny said. “But isn’t it beautiful? Look at this dash.”
Sanjay sighed. It was no use. Johnny wasn’t going to listen to him.
They returned to the lot and parked in front. Sanjay opened his door and was about to step out when the door was smashed into by a guy on a motorcycle.
To Sanjay, it seemed to happen in slow motion. He saw the motorcycle rider hurling through the air, his arms flailing like a long distance jumper, Sanjay watching in horror as the man hit the ground and bounced before coming to rest. He was still trying to process that when a car run over the guy’s legs.
“Holy shit,” Johnny shouted.
Then the car took off, leaving the motorcycle rider alone. Sanjay looked across the BMW roof to see Johnny slowly stepping back towards his Ford Explorer. God! Johnny was trying to leave!
Sanjay walked over to the motorcycle rider. Remarkably, the rider got to his knees and started to make his way toward his bike.
“Are you okay?” Sanjay said. “God I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
The rider looked like he was about nineteen. He looked at Sanjay and said, “No problemo.”
“What?” Sanjay said.
But that was all he got out of him. Now the kid was standing! God in heaven, he was on his feet and picking up the motorbike.
And Sanjay figured it out. The guy was an illegal alien. He didn’t want anything to do with the police. Even if he was crippled by someone else’s negligence. No problemo.
Sanjay turned. “Johnny!”
But Johnny was standing by the door of his Ford, making some sort of shrugging gesture. Now Johnny was looking back to the front of the store, hoping the Bosnians wouldn’t come out. Johnny motioned to Sanjay.
“Come on.”
The rider was trying to pick his motorbike up.
Sanjay walked over and helped him. Within a minute, the rider and motorcycle were gone.
Sanjay turned around to see that Johnny was now in his own car, turning over the engine. Sanjay ran over and jumped inside and Johnny drove away.
In the rearview mirror, Sanjay saw one Bosnian, then another come out of the store and look at the BMW with the passenger door hanging loosely from the side. The two of them staring at the car, trying to comprehend it…
Sanjay said, “Uh, don’t you think we should talk to those guys?”
“Fuck em’,” Johnny said.
“But their car…”
“Hey, I’m doing you a favor. You’re the one who opened the door.”
“I didn’t even want to be here!”
“Okay,” Johnny said. “Anyway, it’s up to them to insure their car. Let the buyer beware.”
Sanjay said, “But you were supposed to be the buyer.”
Johnny didn’t have an answer for that one. He just sped back to the salon.
Sanjay didn’t return to the office that day. He was too stressed out. Waiting for the police to show up on his doorstep or to be sued. Worse was the fear that the fucking Bosnians would come to his office to slit his throat. He never did return to the salon.
Hastings looked at the copy of the petition that named him as a defendant. The City of St. Louis had also been named as a defendant. The suit had been filed in federal court and it made allegations of violations of constitutional rights and of state law. It was eighteen pages long. Hastings began paging through it, reading pieces of the story it told, the bad things he had done to the plaintiff.
Chief Grassino said, “Is this the first time you’ve seen this?”
“Yes,” said Hastings, flicking ahead to the last page. At the end the plaintiff demand
ed a sum in excess of ten million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages. “I see it. I don’t quite believe it.”
“You’ll probably get served personally today or tomorrow. It’s a psych game. They want you to be scared, having a lawsuit handed to you.”
“I’m being sued,” Hastings said. He still couldn’t comprehend it.
“I’ve been sued plenty of times,” the chief said. “It’s not that big a deal. You want to work in law enforcement, you’re going to get sued. It’s the way it is these days. Your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Try not to let it upset you.”
Chief Mark Grassino was in his mid fifties, about fifteen years older than Hastings. He was lean and fit and he looked good in the uniform which he wore for funerals and photo ops. He had the look of a leader. Grassino had been chief of the St. Louis Police Department for only a few years, having spent most of his law enforcement career in Atlanta. Grassino and Hastings were not exactly friends. They did not socialize together off duty or exchange chit-chat. But Hastings respected him and more or less liked him. Hastings had been a police officer long enough to know that every police chief is to some degree a politician and that solid friendships with such men are usually illusory.
Hastings said, “It lists me and the City as defendants. No one else.”
Chief Grassino spared him the insult of pretending to re-examine the petition. He looked across his desk and said, “Yeah.”
“So you didn’t get sued,” Hastings said.
“No. Would you be happier if I did?”
“No,” Hastings said. Which was probably a lie and they both knew it. Misery takes comfort in company, particularly on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
The chief sensed his anxiety and said, “Look, I asked you to come here so I could tell you about it personally. I could have just given it to your captain and told her to tell you.”
“I know,” Hastings said. He realized he was supposed to be grateful. But somehow gratitude was not something he could express right now. He still was having trouble taking this all in. A man murders a twelve year old girl and grievously wounds her mother. The victims are his stepdaughter and ex-wife, respectively. He somehow escapes conviction and then sues the police. It didn’t seem real.
After a moment, Hastings managed to say, “Why me?”
“You were the lead detective on the case. You sat at the table with the prosecution team during the trial. Their table rep. It was your baby. Bradbury didn’t sue the prosecutors because they have absolute immunity by law.”
“Don’t I have immunity too?”
“You have what’s known as qualified immunity. You may have.”
“May have?”
“George, it’s a complicated legal issue. I’m not a lawyer. Listen, you’re not on your own here. The City’s lawyers are going to defend you. They’ll have to, as you were acting in the scope of your employment.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“I know how you feel. I’ve been there before. You get sued and you take it personally.”
“Wouldn’t you take it personally?”
“Yeah, but…that’s not the point. With a man like Ryan Bradbury, you shouldn’t be surprised he would do this. He is a vindictive, evil man. Without remorse, without shame.”
But with a lot of money, Hastings thought.
Ryan Bradbury was one of four sons of the late Cole Bradbury, a man who had made a fortune in the hotel business. The Bradbury holdings did not put them on the Forbes 400 list, but conservative estimates of the family’s net worth were around sixty million dollars. Like many sons of wealth, Cole Bradbury’s boys had not amounted to much. Ryan, who was the youngest, turned out to be a monster.
Ryan Bradbury had been trouble from the start. A short man of stocky build, he was known to frequent the clubs of St. Louis with a couple of bodyguards. Anyone who dared to insult him or not show him what he believed was due deference would find themselves roughed up by his men. If criminal charges were filed, they were soon dropped after threats were made or people were paid off. When it came to women, Ryan Bradbury did the beating himself. His girlfriends all seemed to have trouble falling down stairs. Despite his violent reputation, he never suffered from a shortage of female companionship. He was rich and powerful and women were drawn to him. His father retained some control over him while he was alive. But after the father died, Ryan felt free to marry. He had a taste for wild blondes with big tits and trashy exteriors.
At the age of thirty-eight, he selected a divorcee from Granite City, Illinois. Her name was Rana McElroy and she had what Ryan was looking for. She was married to a car dealer in South County and she was bored with her upper middle class life. Ryan called her Rana Redlight and told her she was the prettiest girl he’d ever known. He took her on trips to Bimini and Aspen and Paris and gave her diamonds and BMW’s. He paid for surgeries that made her nose smaller and her chin more pronounced and her bust bigger. (Even though Rana’s friends believed her boobs were already oversized.) Rana left the auto dealer and married Ryan. She brought with her to the marriage a daughter who was ten years old. The girl’s name was Tonya and her parents always called her Toni.
Two years of beatings persuaded Rana Bradbury she had made a bad choice. She filed for divorce and persuaded a judge to grant a temporary order giving her the house during the divorce proceedings. A month after the judge granted that order, Ryan Bradbury tried to kill Rana.
He lay in wait at the house while Rana was on a date. He hid in the kitchen, the lights off, a .357 revolver in his hand. Perhaps he was genuinely surprised when Toni walked into the kitchen instead of Rana. In any event, he shot Toni in the face and then in the chest. Dragged her body into the living room and waited for the girl’s mother. He shot at Rana Redlight three times, hitting her twice. He had not brought anymore ammunition. Rana ran to her car and locked herself inside and Ryan Bradbury took off.
Toni McElroy died. Her mother survived. Lieutenant George Hastings was assigned the homicide and after taking Rana’s statement, arrested Ryan Bradbury.
Hastings was surprised that Bradbury tried to take a swing at him. But he dodged the punch and made a point of cuffing Bradbury himself. Bradbury said, “Do you know who I am?” And Hastings told him to shut up and read him his rights. Then Bradbury turned and gave him some sort of Jimmy Cagney look and said, “You’re going to find out.”
To Hastings, Ryan Bradbury was just another punk. A forty year old boy who had never grown up and liked to smack women around and was willing to kill them if he thought he couldn’t control them. Bradbury was a loser and a homicidal misfit and money wasn’t going to change that.
But Hastings had underestimated what money could buy. Millions for defense, none for tribute. Bradbury hired a lawyer named Simon Cray and paid him a half million dollar retainer. Things went bad from there. The case was assigned to one of those judges who means well but is not especially bright or perceptive. The judge was a political appointee, a nice man who got along with just about everybody. A man who, at heart, could not quite comprehend how a rich white man from a good family could commit murder. The judge was no match for Simon Cray.
The defense’s strategy was clear from the beginning: demonize Rana Bradbury. She was, after all, the only witness. Bradbury had murdered the other one. Simon Cray brought up evidence of Rana’s drug use and promiscuity and the dubious, sometimes criminal history of some of her lovers. The number of men she had let stay overnight at the house. Who knew how many people had access to that house? Rana Bradbury was a slut. A greedy, coke-snorting whore.
The judge donned a thoughtful, considerate face and let all this “evidence” in. The jury, unconsciously or consciously, thought there must be a good reason for it. The focus shifted from the murder of a twelve year old girl to the character of her mother.
Hastings testified, mostly about the physical evidence. His voice broke when he talked about seeing Toni McElroy’s body. He did not tell th
e jury that the sight of her made him think of his own daughter. The defense attorney rolled his eyes, trying to signal to the jury that Hastings was performing. Ryan Bradbury just smiled at him.
Ryan Bradbury never took the stand. The jury took two hours to acquit him.
Hastings would remember the sight of the trial judge smiling at Bradbury and his lawyer, the three of them talking about a restaurant they liked. He wondered if he could get away with punching the judge.
Now Bradbury and his lawyer were suing him.
Chief Grassino said, “George, the suit isn’t going to go anywhere. They’re doing this because the girl’s father is going to file a wrongful death suit against Bradbury. They want to create a distraction.”
“I just can’t believe they can do this,” Hastings said. “After what he did.”
“You got a hundred and fifty dollars, you can file a lawsuit.”
“But the man murdered a child. And now he’s suing me?”
“He can do it.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Then the chief said, “I don’t mean he can win it. I mean he can file it.”
Hastings sighed. “What happens now?”
“The City Attorney’s office will be in touch with you.”
“All right.”
Hastings stood up to leave.
“George?”
“Yeah.”
“We do try to take care of our own here. My opinion, I think you should take a couple of days off. You’ve got some comp time coming, don’t you?”
“Plenty.” Hastings became defensive. “Why? Do I look like I need to take time off?”
“No one’s saying that. But I want you to know that the best of us can get burned out and need some rest. You’ve been doing this long enough to understand that.”
“Are you ordering me to take a couple of days off?”
“No,” the chief said firmly. He didn’t like being pushed anymore than Hastings did. “It’s a suggestion, nothing more. Okay?”
Bullet Beth (George Hastings police procedural) Page 1