by Jude Hardin
Tanner was about six feet tall and six feet wide. He was one of the fattest people Wahlman had ever seen. He wore yellow pants and a yellow shirt and a black sports jacket that could have doubled as a boat cover. He looked like a gigantic bumble bee.
“Leave her alone,” Wahlman said. “She’ll have your money for you tomorrow afternoon. I guarantee it.”
“Where’s my briefcase?” Tanner asked.
“That’s why you followed me?”
“You were supposed to put it in the trash can by the hardware store.”
Allison rolled her window down and handed the briefcase to Wahlman, who then whizzed it toward Tanner like some kind of aerodynamically-challenged Frisbee. It landed on the gritty pavement, skidded and came to a rest at Tanner’s feet.
“There you go,” Wahlman said. “Hope the asphalt didn’t scar it up too bad.”
“You should probably get back in the car,” Tanner said, tapping the head of the baseball bat against the palm of his hand. “As of now, this is none of your business.”
“Allison’s my friend,” Wahlman said. “So I’m making it my business.”
Tanner laughed. “Well, it’s nice to have friends, isn’t it? Especially ones as loyal as you seem to be. I have friends, too. And believe me, mine are incredibly loyal.”
Two guys climbed out of the SUV. They walked up to where Tanner was standing. One of them was a little taller than Tanner, the other a little shorter. Both of them had square jaws and broad shoulders and thick corded necks. They wore tailored black suits and black ties and white shirts. Military buzz cuts, wraparound shades. Goon A and Goon B, Wahlman thought. From central casting. They didn’t say anything. They just stood there with their hands behind their backs.
“I need the money now,” Tanner said. “She’s already way behind, and she hasn’t returned any of my phone calls. I’m a reasonable man, but—”
“You got shit in your ears?” Wahlman asked. “You’ll get your money tomorrow. Now tell your guys to get back in the truck before they break a nail or something.”
Goon A took a few steps forward.
Goon B followed.
Now they were standing several feet in front of Tanner. Several feet closer to Wahlman. They didn’t have their hands behind their backs anymore. They had them at their sides.
And Wahlman could see that each of them was wearing a set of brass knuckles.
“The only thing we’re going to break is your face,” Goon A said.
“You need to get back in your vehicle,” Wahlman said. “Your fat boss might have a heart attack if he has to carry you over there.”
Goon A took another step forward, reared back and took a roundhouse swing, aiming for the left side of Wahlman’s jaw.
Wahlman had never been hit with brass knuckles before, but he knew what kind of damage they could do. He’d seen an x-ray one time. Sailor in a bar fight up in Philadelphia. The guy’s skull had been cracked like an egg.
The roundhouse from Goon A came fast and hard. Wahlman ducked, felt the cold metal graze his left ear, went down dizzily and caught himself with his palm and jammed the sole of his foot into the center of Goon A’s knee. He struck the joint squarely, the ligaments snapping like dry twigs as the newly-ruined extremity crumpled in the wrong direction.
Goon A screamed and fell to the pavement while Goon B moved in and kicked Wahlman in the back of his ribcage. Viciously. Repeatedly. Arcing back and following through, swinging the boot like the weight on a pendulum, again and again and again, heaving and grunting, snarling and snorting, pouring everything he had into a stupid slobbering anger-fueled frenzy that left his incredibly loyal ass almost totally exhausted after about thirty seconds.
Wahlman knew that his back would be extremely sore tomorrow, but he also knew that Goon B hadn’t done any lasting damage. He hadn’t broken any ribs. The latissimus dorsi muscles on Wahlman’s back were much thicker than most people’s. This was partly due to some of the exercises he did when he played football, but it was mostly due to genetics. By the time Wahlman turned fifteen years old, his body looked like something out of a comic book. Pecs like blocks of concrete, biceps the size of cantaloupes. All without lifting a single dumbbell. Everyone assumed that he spent a lot of time at the gym, but he didn’t. It was just the way he was built. The massive layers of muscle tissue provided him with great strength, and they also protected his bones and internal organs against the kind of blunt trauma Goon B had been delivering so enthusiastically over the past half-minute or so.
Wahlman was still lightheaded from being clipped with the brass knuckles, but he could tell that Goon B was getting tired. He could tell that the intensity of the impacts had started to wane. As Tanner edged a little closer to the ruckus, Wahlman rolled over and grabbed the boot Goon B had been kicking him with and twisted it clockwise. Goon B lost his balance, fell and landed right on top of Goon A, and—based on the guttural string of shrieks and expletives that ensued—reignited the pain in the part of his leg that had once been a knee.
Wahlman didn’t wait for Goon B to get up. He was on him in an instant. He grabbed his skinny black tie and yanked upward on it, causing his chest to rise and his head to tilt back, and causing another series of agonized cries from Goon A, who now had two people on top of him. When Goon B instinctively straightened his neck in an effort to correct the awkward and uncomfortable position, Wahlman met him with an elbow to the nose. There was a sickening crunch and a shower of bright red blood and some coughing and gurgling, followed by a sudden unsettling silence as both of the injured men apparently lost consciousness.
Tanner took a step backward, toward the SUV. He still had the bat, but he wasn’t holding it in a threatening manner anymore.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
“Looks over to me,” Wahlman said.
“I’m going to get my money, one way or another.”
“You’ll get it tomorrow. Like I told you before. Minus whatever the damage to Allison’s car adds up to. Right now you should probably get in your truck and call whoever you need to call to come and scrape these unfortunate gentlemen off the asphalt.”
“I could have busted your head open with this bat,” Tanner said.
“And I could have shoved that bat up your ass,” Wahlman said. “Sideways.”
Tanner turned around and started walking toward the SUV.
Wahlman walked around to the passenger side of Allison’s car and climbed back into the front seat.
“I guess I forgot to tell you to put the briefcase in the trash can,” Allison said.
“Yeah,” Wahlman said. “I guess you did.”
13
A box of .38 shells purchased legally at a sporting goods store cost almost as much as the revolver had cost in the freezer over at Dena Jo’s. Wahlman didn’t need a whole box of bullets, but you couldn’t just walk in and ask for half a dozen. It didn’t work that way. You had to buy the entire sealed box and you had to sign for it and you had to pay the tax. You could buy single rounds on the black market, but Wahlman didn’t have any of those kinds of connections in New Orleans.
Tanner was the only person Allison knew who sometimes dealt in undocumented merchandise, but of course he wouldn’t have sold Wahlman a water pistol after the incident over on the West Bank.
So Wahlman had to buy the entire box of .38 caliber cartridges, and he had to pay a lot of money for it. Not to mention that by law every such transaction had to be conducted in front of a video camera, which meant that the police could eventually obtain even more incriminating evidence to use against Wahlman if they picked him up for the sandwich shop shooting. Which they would, eventually, unless he found the real shooters first.
Allison parked her car in the hotel’s garage. Wahlman broke the seal on the box of bullets and started loading the gun.
“Sorry about all the trouble,” Allison said.
“Me too. But I feel better now that I have a weapon and some ammunition.”
Allison sta
rted massaging her temples with her fingertips.
“I’m glad someone feels better,” she said.
“You have a headache?”
“I’ll be okay. I have some pills in my carryon bag. Are you going to your room now?”
“My truck is parked somewhere in this garage. I’m going to try to find it so I can get my luggage. Then I’ll go to my room and take a look at the business card with the cell phone number on it. Then I’ll come to your room and try to call the guy.”
“Don’t you think the maids have emptied your trash cans by now?”
“I left the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door,” Wahlman said. “So the room should be just as I left it.”
“Okay. Is there anything I can do to help you right now?”
“Just go to your room and wait. I’ll be there in a little while.”
Wahlman stuffed some extra shells into the right front pocket of his jeans, climbed out and slid the revolver into his waistband and walked around the garage until he found his truck, careful to stay in the shadows until he was relatively certain there weren’t any assassins in the vicinity.
Level 5, Section H, Space 14. Right where it was supposed to be, right where his valet parking receipt said it would be. He hadn’t wanted Allison to drive him there, because he didn’t want her to know where the vehicle was parked. She seemed to be all right, but he had been hurt more than once by people who seemed to be all right. There was only one person in the world he fully trusted, and Allison Bentley wasn’t that person. Especially since the goof-up with the briefcase. Wahlman believed that it had been unintentional, but still. Those were the kinds of mistakes that got people killed.
Wahlman’s suitcase was in the back, zippered into a weatherproof vinyl cover. He pulled it out and carried it to the elevator, and then he decided that the stairs might be safer. He walked down to the first level and out to the street and around to the hotel.
He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, went to his room and promptly discovered that his key didn’t work anymore. It had worked just minutes ago when he’d entered the hotel through the side door, but it wasn’t working now. He tried the card several times, kept getting the red LED on the electronic indicator at the front of the slot.
He looked around, saw a housekeeping cart outside a room down at the end of the hallway. He walked down there and asked the woman pulling sheets off the bed if she could let him into his room.
“Which room?” she asked.
“Four sixty-two. I have my key, but it’s not working for some reason.”
The woman looked at her clipboard. “Says here that room’s vacant. I was going to clean it after I clean this one.”
“It’s not vacant,” Wahlman said. “It’s my room. I don’t want it cleaned right now.”
“I’ll have to get with my supervisor on that,” the woman said.
Wahlman nodded. The elevator bank was right around the corner and his suitcase was heavy and he was tired of taking the stairs. He made it down to the first floor, trotted over to the front desk, waited for a man wearing an off-white linen suit and an off-white straw fedora to ask a million or so questions before deciding on a double with two queens, and then he stepped up to the counter and asked the guy standing behind it why he couldn’t get into his room. The guy did his thing on the computer, and then he told Wahlman that the account that he had used to check in with did not contain sufficient funds to cover the hotel’s standard hold on incidental charges.
“That’s impossible,” Wahlman said. “I have over seven thousand dollars in that account.”
“Not according to the statement we received from your bank,” the clerk said. “If you would like to provide an alternate form of payment, I would be happy to—”
“Use this,” Wahlman said, sliding his Visa card across the desk.
Wahlman didn’t like to buy things on credit. He believed in paying as he went. He’d opened the account as an emergency backup, kept a zero balance and a low limit.
He reckoned this qualified as an emergency.
The clerk ran the card and handed over a fresh set of room keys, apologized for the inconvenience and told Wahlman to have a great day.
By the time Wahlman made it back up to his room, the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door handle was gone and the housekeeping cart was nowhere in sight. He opened the door and walked in and saw that the bed had been made and the trash had been emptied.
He set his suitcase down, stepped over to the phone and called the front desk.
“May I help you?”
“I need my garbage back,” Wahlman said.
“Excuse me?”
“Would it be possible for me to speak to the housekeeping supervisor?”
“I’ll try to transfer you. Hold on just a second.”
Wahlman held on for way more than a second. More like two minutes. Finally, the jazzy rendition of a twentieth century song Wahlman couldn’t remember the name of stopped abruptly and was replaced by the voice of a man who sounded as though he might have just gotten up from a nap.
“Housekeeping,” the man said.
“This is Rock Wahlman in four sixty-two. My trash was emptied a while ago, and I need it back.”
“You need your trash back?”
“I accidentally threw something away. A business card. It has a very important phone number on it. I need to get it back.”
There was a long pause.
“That’s going to be a problem,” the man said. “All the trash gets loaded into big plastic bags, and then it’s dropped down a chute that empties into a bin in the basement. It’s not separated by which room it came from, or even which floor. We’re talking half a ton of garbage every day. There’s no way you’re going to find a business card in that mess.”
“I need to try,” Wahlman said.
“I can’t let you crawl around in that bin. It’s not safe. Broken glass, razor blades. Who knows what might be in there. You know what I’m saying?”
“Sure. I know what you’re saying. I guess I’ll just have to forget about finding that card. I guess it’s gone forever. Thanks anyway.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
Wahlman thanked the man again, hung the phone up, walked downstairs and out the side door, headed up to Canal Street to buy some goggles and rubber gloves.
And a magnifying glass, which he’d somehow forgotten to stop for on the way back to the hotel with Allison.
14
It wasn’t quite as difficult as the housekeeping supervisor had thought it would be for Wahlman to determine which of the big white plastic bags contained the trash from his room. It only took him about five minutes to find the bag from the fourth floor. The plastic was translucent, and he could see the logo on the box from the chicken place Allison had gone to last night to get their dinner.
He tore the bag open and started ferreting through the nastiness. No broken glass or razor blades, but plenty of stuff that probably should have been sealed into a container with a biohazard stamp on it. There was a dirty diaper that probably should have been sealed in lead and buried deeply in the ground. Half-eaten hamburgers, dental floss, candy wrappers. Someone had discarded a sizeable wedge of birthday cake. Chocolate with chocolate frosting. It said PY BIR, and below that, JA. Maybe the person’s name was Jane. Or Jason. Or Jack. With the hefty tax on sugar these days, Wahlman wondered why so much of the cake had been thrown away. He didn’t wonder about it long, though, because right underneath the circular piece of cardboard it had been mounted on was the business card he was looking for.
He reached down and picked up the card, slid it into his back pocket, climbed out of the bin and brushed himself off. He tossed the goggles and the rubber gloves and took the stairs back up to the fourth floor and went to his room.
The clothes he was wearing were filthy from fighting in the street and digging in the trash. He opened his suitcase and set out some clean things—Levi’s and socks and boxers and an undershirt, and a blue
oxford button-down with tails that could be left out to conceal the revolver—and then he shaved and took a shower and transferred everything from the pockets of his dirty clothes to the pockets of his fresh clothes and made a pot of coffee and looked at the business card with the magnifying glass. He’d used a ballpoint pen to write Fake Drake’s number on the card, and the pressure from the point had indeed left an impression, albeit a very faint one. He could make out every number except the second to the last.
The phone started ringing. The only person Wahlman wanted to talk to right now was Allison, and there was no way to be certain that she was the one calling. So instead of answering the phone, Wahlman turned the coffee pot off, stuffed the clothes he’d been wearing earlier into the trash can, slid the .38 into his waistband, zipped up his suitcase and left the room.
As he made his way down the corridor, it occurred to him that maybe he didn’t even need his own hotel room anymore. Now that he’d gotten the business card back, the room wasn’t much more than a liability. He’d initially hoped to use it as a lure for the assassins, but now he was concerned that the detectives investigating the shooting at the sandwich shop would show up first.
He knocked on Allison’s door. She opened it and let him in. The drapes had been closed, and all the lights were off except for the shaded lamp on the nightstand.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Wahlman asked.
“I told you I have a headache,” Allison said.
“Did you take something?”
“I did. But it hasn’t kicked in yet.”