Killer Groove: A Cooper & Rockne Mystery #1 (Cooper & Rockne Mysteries)

by Dan Ames

  Not a great message to send to potential residents.

  The complex itself looked like maybe it had been impressive at one point, but now the upkeep had gotten to be too much for the current owners. I saw peeling plaster, a parking area choked with weeds and a tile roof with plenty of pieces missing.

  “The hooking business has seen better times, apparently,” Mary said. “Let’s ring some bells.”

  She stepped up to the main doors to the complex and opened them. I followed her inside.

  There was a security guard asleep in a chair. Mary let out a low whistle until his eyes opened.

  She pulled out a wad of pesos and held it in front of him.

  “Zeta,” she said.

  He took the money.

  “Trescientos cinco.”

  I knew enough Spanish to translate. 305.

  We took the elevator up and knocked on the door. The hallway smelled of mildew and fajitas.

  The door opened and a thin woman with long brown hair and smeared makeup answered. She looked like she’d either just had sex, used drugs, or both.

  “Hablas ingles?” I asked.

  “A little,” she answered.

  “We’re looking for Zeta,” Mary said. “Do you know where she is?”

  The woman yawned. “Los Meranos.”

  “What the hell is that?” Mary asked.

  “A zip line,” the woman said. She pronounced it ‘zeep line.’ “You know, wheeeeee!!!!” She imitated someone riding on a zip line.

  “She went zip lining?” I asked. “A hooker on a zip line. One of my fantasies during puberty.”

  “I can’t take you anywhere, can I?” Mary asked me.

  “And they have cuevas there,” the woman said.

  “Cuevas?” I asked. “What the hell are cuevas?”

  The woman nodded and started to close the door as she gave us the translation.

  “Caves.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Lines along the sky above and rumors down below.

  Watch the hooker’s walk the street putting on a show.

  -Stiletto Groove (by Groovy Train)

  During his years working for organized crime, Rutger had come to the conclusion that the average citizen would probably be shocked to learn how many of the legitimate businesses they frequented were in fact owned by the Mob.

  In New York, he knew of a candy store, a miniature golf course, an ice cream chain and a Zumba studio that were all owned by organized crime.

  But he if were to tell the truth, he couldn’t say that he’d ever seen a zip line business owned by criminals.

  It was a first.

  Although, once he thought about it, it made sense.

  Anywhere there was cash, there was fertile ground for illegal behavior. Whether it was not reporting income to the government, or using the business as a place to launder money, tourist traps could serve a key role in the business of the underworld.

  Now, he steered his rental car into the parking lot of Los Meranos Zip Line Park.

  There were plenty of signs around for confused tourists pointing them in the direction of the zip line, the restaurant, the petting zoo and finally, the entrance to the caves.

  The hunter in him was excited.

  He was close, he knew that.

  Rutger could practically sense his quarry nearby and although his task wasn’t necessarily to kill Zack Hatter, at least not right away, Rutger’s blood thirst was intensifying.

  Along with the excitement came a surge of caution.

  This is when mistakes happened. When aggression overcame thoughtfulness and errors in judgment occurred. The kind that got people killed. Even highly talented specialists like Rutger himself.

  He’d seen it too many times. And when he’d first gotten into the profession, he’d almost made the mistake.

  Once.

  After that, he’d never let himself get careless again.

  So he paused and thought.

  If someone had grabbed Zack Hatter, would they really be holding him in a cave system frequented by tourists? It could mean a lot of witnesses. Plus, tourism was big business here. The government wouldn’t want messy violence anywhere near where the tourists hung out.

  If it was in the ghetto, fine.

  But not where it would cost everyone money.

  So was it possible Zack Hatter was really being held here? The easy answer was only if the cave system was owned by the same criminals who took Hatter.

  Rutger gave it 50-50 odds.

  He carefully examined the cars in the parking lot, a gaggle of tourists waiting to go into the zip line entrance.

  The place looked legitimate on the surface.

  Still, he was wary.

  He put his experience to good use.

  In nearly all of the legitimate businesses owned by criminals, Rutger knew there was always a place that was off-limits to all but a few. This was so innocent employees or delivery men, or even customers, wouldn’t see something they shouldn’t have and end up dead because of it.

  The same would be the case here.

  His first thought was that a cave system would be a perfect place to hold someone. Underground. Perhaps a section blocked off from the others.

  But then it raised its own problems. What about a bathroom? Coming and going? Meals, if they were feeding him?

  It seemed like a pain in the ass.

  He needed to start at the head of the snake. An office. There was always an office in these places. And often, there would be a second office. The real headquarters for the real business.

  And if Rutger was wrong, and Zack Hatter was actually in a fucking cave somewhere, he figured he would find someone in the office who could take him there.

  He got out of the car, locked it, and patted his front pocket for the extra clip he might need. The gun, with its silencer now reattached, was in his waistband at the small of his back.

  You never knew in situations like this.

  There was a separate, small parking lot behind the main one, with a sign that said authorized parking only.

  This is where the staff would park.

  He walked over to it, passed the sign and continued around behind the main building. He saw dumpsters and the back door that clearly led to the restaurant. To the left was a section of building with its own private entrance, and a Mazda sports car parked near the door.

  The Mazda seemed out of place and Rutger felt another surge of excitement.

  He walked up to the door, reached for the doorknob and turned it.

  It opened.

  A thin, scrawny guy in a white tank top and tattoos sat with his feet up on a desk in front of him, smoking a joint. A woman sat in a chair across from him and she turned in her chair and looked back at Rutger.

  A machete was on the desk.

  “Zeta?” Rutger asked the woman.

  “Si,” she responded.

  Rutger brought out his gun and casually shot Tattoo Boy in the head.

  Zeta didn’t move.

  She looked at the machete, and instantly thought better of it.

  Rutger walked over to her, put the muzzle of the gun against her temple.

  “Where’s Zack Hatter?” he asked.

  Chapter Forty

  My woman’s got a turtleneck,

  She wears it all in black.

  My woman’s got a nylon heart

  It beats the others back.

  -Black Turtleneck (by Groovy Train)

  “Puberty must have been very difficult for you,” Mary said. “A hooker and a zip line? That’s kind of an unusual fantasy.”

  “It may not have been exactly that,” John said. “But I did tend to get very creative.”

  They had left Zeta’s apartment building and gotten on the road to the zip line/cave complex. Mary wasn’t sure what to expect.

  This case had gotten awfully weird, awfully fast.

  She was glad to be away from the rest of the Coopers, though, and she found hanging out with
John Rockne to be tolerable.

  Maybe even somewhat enjoyable.

  Mary shook her head. This guy was a trip. She liked him, liked his easygoing personality and the fact that he had a sense of humor was a plus.

  Too bad he was married. Or maybe that was a good thing.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Or are you still going through puberty?”

  “No, I’m all done,” Mary said. “Just wrapped up puberty a couple of weeks ago. It felt good, but it was brief. No elaborate fantasies other than clear skin.”

  “That’s great, you being done with puberty, and all,” John said.

  “Thanks, that means a lot.”

  The highway was crowded with the usual array of bad drivers, trucks loaded with landscape supplies and the occasional suicidal motorcyclist going way too fast.

  “So what do you think?” Mary said. “Do you think we’ll actually find Zack Hatter at a zip line place for tourists?”

  “Probably not,” Rockne said. “But it’s worth checking out, if nothing more than to cross it off the list. It does make you wonder, though, if he’s not out there, what is Zeta the hooker doing out there? Can she really meet a lot of johns at a zip line business? What’s her pitch? Get off the zip line, climb onto me?”

  “That’s a good slogan,” Mary said. “But you’re right. Most of the men out here are going to be tourists with their families. Hookers work in bars and online. What is she doing out here?”

  John didn’t have an answer and Mary let the question hang in the silence. The road wound up into the hills and soon they could no longer get any glimpses of the Pacific.

  “So what’s your wife like?” Mary asked.

  John raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “Feisty,” he said. “A lot like you.”

  Mary scoffed. “I’m not feisty,” she said. “I’m lively. So you have kids?”

  “Two girls,” John said. “It’s weird being away from them.” He glanced at Mary. “How about you?”

  “Yes, I find it weird being away from you, too,” she said.

  “Married? Kids?”

  “Not married. No kids. At least, as far as I know.”

  Old joke, but Mary always used it to deflect the question.

  Somewhat gratefully, Mary saw a sign for the turnoff to the zip line, and a parking lot ahead.

  John pulled the rental car into the driveway. To the right, she could see a cluster of buildings with people milling around wearing helmets and harnesses, either just back from a zip line ride, or about to depart.

  To the left, was another building and a smaller parking lot.

  “Park there,” she said to John, pointing toward the smaller lot. “That looks like an office in back. Let’s go see if anyone knows what the hell is going on.”

  John parked and together they walked to the office.

  There was a red Mazda parked near the door, and another car next to it. Mary thought it looked like a rental car, too.

  She wished again she had a gun.

  Mary knocked and heard people moving on the other side of the door. Her hand instinctively went to where she carried her gun. She started to say something to John, but just then the door opened.

  Mary turned her head back to the door but a hand shot out, grabbed her by the hair, and yanked her inside.

  Chapter Forty-One

  We wander in from the other side.

  We wonder how we lost our pride.

  -Mess (by Groovy Train)

  It was probably stupid to do so, but I crashed in through the door, following Mary. It seemed pointless to do anything else. What was I going to do, duck around the corner, call 911 and hope someone arrived?

  So I barged in after Mary.

  The first thing I saw was a dead guy in a chair, with blood all over his face and half of his head gone.

  There was a woman on her knees with her arms folded over her head and directly in front of me was a tall thin man with dark hair and a face that betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

  He had a gun held to Mary’s head.

  He was looking at me with a quizzical expression on his face.

  And finally, slumped on the ground next to the woman with her arms folded over her head was Zack Hatter.

  “Jesus, can we fit a few more people in here?” the man with the gun said. His face showed no humor, but his mouth was shaped into a small grimace.

  “Did you say Jesus or Jésus?” Mary asked.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked.

  “I’m the guy that’s going to kill everyone in this room if Mr. Zack Hatter doesn’t tell me what I need to know.”

  He pushed Mary across the room to where Zack and the woman on her knees was, and then he waved me over there, too, with his gun.

  “Well, this sucks,” Mary said.

  “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” Zack sang, in the melody of the song by U2. He looked deranged. He was either drunk, on drugs, or out of his mind from pain and suffering.

  He looked even worse than he did in the horrible photos. I knew it was him, but I swear to God he looked like what Zack Hatter’s grandpa would look like. Ancient. And the very much worse for wear.

  The thin man with the gun had a cell phone in his hand. He looked closely at Zack.

  “I’d kill you if you weren’t brain-dead already,” he said.

  He looked around the room. “Bad news for you folks.”

  “It is crowded in here,” I said. “How about I leave and make room for everyone?” I said as I put my hand on the doorknob, but it opened without any effort on my part and a shotgun barrel entered the room, followed by three men covered in tattoos, heavily armed and they trained all of their guns on the slim man with the pistol. There was nowhere for any of us to go, including the thin man with the pistol, who the new visitors seemed to be concentrating on.

  “Señor, la pistol, por favor,” the guy with the shotgun said.

  “No way, José,” the thin man said.

  He fired, casually, almost without aiming and the guy with the shotgun staggered back, but he was able to pull the trigger and the shotgun erupted. The thin man’s chest was extremely thin now as the shotgun blast disintegrated it and turned into a shredded mass of blood and tissue. His pistol swung as he sagged and it fired again, this time sending a round through the kneeling woman’s head.

  More blood and a fine mist filled the air.

  “Holy shit,” I said. I squeezed closer to Zack and Mary. I had no choice. My ears were ringing and the room was filled with the battling scents of gunfire and death.

  “Fucking A!” Zack Hatter exclaimed. “No encore tonight, folks!” His eyes were wild and he slumped forward onto the ground.

  One of the other newcomers, with a shotgun of his own, walked over to where the thin man on the ground with the destroyed chest lay writhing.

  “You killed my brother, cabron” he said, his voice in a thick accent. He jacked a shell into the shotgun’s chamber, placed the end of the barrel inches from the man’s face and pulled the trigger.

  I looked away from the destruction it created, and looked the man in the eye.

  He looked straight at me, then Mary and then Zack.

  “Forget this, or you die.”

  “No problema,” Mary said.

  The leader turned to the other guy. “Llevar los cuerpos.”

  The third guy dragged his dead companion from the room, and then both he and the other man hauled out the thin man and the dead woman, who I figured was Zeta.

  I was just guessing, but I figured the thin man had been the shooter in Puerto Vallarta, the guy who’d killed Bulldog.

  But who was he working for? And what had he wanted from Zack?

  The thought of Zack made me look down at the former rock star.

  He was drooling onto the floor and it smelled like he’d soiled himself.

  Last week.

  When we heard the vehicles outside leave with engines roaring and tires spinning, Mary nudged Zack with h
er foot.

  “Rise and shine, superstar,” she said.

  A little bit of vomit seeped from his mouth.

  “Maybe we should get him to a doctor,” I said.

  “If they need a stool sample, it smells like he’s already got one in his pants,” Mary noted.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I wish I had another day

  To tell you why I didn’t pray.

  I wish I had another lie

  To sing to you a lullaby.

  -I Wish (by Groovy Train)

  “So what the hell happened?” Mary asked.

  We were both standing in Zack’s hospital room. It was simple, but clean. It even had a window, which showed just a slice of the ocean, and a decent view of the mountains, now slightly shrouded in mist.

  We’d pooled the rest of our expense money and bribed our way into a decent hotel with a good room.

  Mary and I needed information from Zack. After all, we both had clients waiting for word from us.

  I knew Mary had already called her client, Connie Hapford, and I had touched base with Sunny Hatter, letting her know that Zack was fine and that his latest adventure in Mexico was over.

  Still, I had a feeling he wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

  After all, there was a third party apparently very interested in something Zack Hatter had.

  Zack was sitting up in bed, an IV in his arm. He really looked like hell. And old. He looked every one of his years, with a deep tan, sharply etched lines in his face but his blue eyes still held some power, now that he was out of the grips of whatever drugs he’d been on.

  There was still some charisma that even the long years and nights full of booze and drugs hadn’t managed to diminish.

  “How the hell would I know?” Zack said, finally answering Mary’s question. His voice was raw but still had a presence. It seemed to fill the room. “One minute, I’m partying, having sex with what’s her name, and then the next minute, I wake up in that room and some guy is waving a machete at me and that bitch keeps drugging me up. What the hell!”