Devil's Fancy (Trackdown Book 2)

by Michael A. Black

  The office was small and the two desks took up most of the room. A row of padded chairs, reinforced with an excess of strategically placed duct tape, was in front of Manny’s desk. Three big filing cabinets lined the wall behind him. Dust mites swirled in the beams of sunlight that filtered in through the filthy front window and two air-conditioning units built into the wall hummed on overdrive. Wolf still felt the sweat trickling down inside his shirt from his armpits.

  “No,” Wolf said. “You owe me. I’ll take my percentage of the bounty now, if you don’t mind.”

  Manny chewed a bit, swallowed, and then ran his tongue over his front teeth.

  “You know the drill,” Manny said. “Take him over to Central Booking and get your booking slip. Then you get your percentage.”

  Wolf glanced at his watch again. “The police should be here any second. They can take him.”

  Manny wiped his nose with his fingers and sorted through the box for another donut.

  Manny’s nephew, Freddie, was just coming out of the can. He was a thin guy, maybe a buck and half with an unruly crop of red hair and a pair of thick glasses perched on a hook nose. Freddie nodded a wink to Wolf, dropped the girlie magazine on the second desk and plopped down in the chair.

  “Hey, Sherman,” Manny said. “Didn’t I tell you to get me two Bavarians?”

  Freddie didn’t answer.

  “Hey,” Manny said. “You fucking deaf, or something?”

  “No.” Freddie adjusted himself in the seat and shrugged. “I’m just getting tired of you calling me that.”

  “Calling you what?’

  “Sherman. That ain’t my name.”

  Manny frowned. “It’s what you call a term of endearment. So next time don’t forget to ask for two Bavarians.”

  “That’s exactly what I told them,” Freddie said.

  “Okay, Sherman.” Manny grinned and wiped at his nose again and grabbed a brown donut with white icing and green sprinkles.

  Freddie’s face scrunched up and he glared at his morbidly obese uncle.

  Send in the clowns, Wolf thought, recalling the old Sinatra song. No wait, they’re already here.

  “You ever remember the name of that law firm that hired us in Vegas?” Wolf asked.

  He didn’t want to mention Mexico in front of Luth.

  Manny smacked his lips and shook his head, then his eyes narrowed as he looked through the front window.

  Outside two marked squad cars pulled up at diagonal angles to the Escalade. An officer got out and eyed the damaged window, cocked his head, and said something into his radio mic. The other officer got out and approached the front door, placing one hand on the doorknob and the other on his weapon. The other one spoke into his radio mic again and then they both approached the door. Wolf kept his hands open and out in front of him. He made sure his bail enforcement agent badge was prominently visible on his chest. Manny edged his expansive gut closer to the desk and told Freddie to keep his piece out of sight.

  The officer pulled open the door, stepped inside, and looked around.

  “You the one driving the Escalade?” he asked.

  Wolf nodded, still keeping his hands visible.

  “You’re the guy working for Big Jim McNamara,” the cop said.

  Wolf nodded again. He hoped it would be a plus to have a friend in high places. Or maybe low ones.

  “He’s working for me, Charlie,” Manny said, lifting the box. “You guys want a donut?”

  The officer glared at the big man, then back to Wolf and pointed to the holster on his right side.

  “You armed?”

  “Just with a Taser.” Wolf placed his hands on his head and stepped around to the cop, who did a quick pat down. He paused when he came to the tear in the shirt. Wolf winced as the man’s hand went over it.

  “This what I think it is?” he asked.

  “He shot me,” Wolf said. “I was effecting an arrest. He’s got a warrant out for possession and delivery, PCS.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Luth said. “And I shot him, but it was self-defense.”

  The cop finished his pat down and clapped Wolf on the shoulder and told him to drop his hands and relax. Wolf gave the officer his IDs and the first cop ran a check on him.

  “What’s your version of what happened?” the other cop asked.

  Wolf gave them a quick rundown, explaining he was working for Manny on fugitive recovery and had been stalking out Luth’s girlfriend’s place hoping to find him. He left out the part about her calling him.

  “Bullshit,” Luth said. “That bitch set me up. I know she did. She’s gonna pay for it once I get out.”

  “You’d best keep your mouth shut,” the one cop said. “Making threats in front of two police officers after you just shot someone’s not real smart.”

  “I never shot him,” Luth said. “Well, at least I didn’t mean to.”

  “Yeah,” the cop said. “Whatever.” He turned back to Wolf. “How bad’s your injury?’

  Wolf shrugged. “Not real bad. It hit me a glancing blow on the vest.” He pulled up the shirt displaying a swollen red patch.

  “Want me to call the paramedics?” the officer asked.

  Wolf shook his head. “I’ll go get it checked out, but I’ve been hurt worse.”

  In reality, he didn’t have any health insurance and he didn’t want to ask Mac to foot the bill for an emergency room visit.

  The cop clucked his tongue. “We recovered a Glock seventeen at the scene. Is that the weapon?”

  “Probably,” Wolf said. “I left it there for you.”

  The cop smirked. “Knew we were coming, did you?”

  “Figured as much. The neighbor was kind of pissed that I blocked in his truck.”

  “And why didn’t you wait around to explain things?” the other cop asked.

  “Well, like I said, the neighbor seemed kind of pissed off that I was blocking in his truck.”

  The questioning went on for several more minutes, with Wolf declining to sign a criminal complaint at this time and the officers re-cuffing Luth and agreeing to take him in for booking on the warrant.

  “There’ll be a detective following up with you,” the younger cop said.

  “I’ll send Sherman here over for a copy of the booking slip,” Manny said. “Okay?”

  “Freddie. The name’s Freddie.”

  Manny snorted and shrugged. “Yeah, well, you look like a Sherman to me.” He grinned. “You guys ever watch that old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show? Don’t he look just like that kid that was with the dog? What’s his name? Mr. Peabody?”

  “And the Wayback Machine,” the older cop said. laughing. “Yeah, he does.”

  Wolf remembered seeing the show on a nostalgia channel and had to admit that there was a distinct resemblance.

  Freddie slammed a drawer shut.

  After they’d left, Manny went to his safe, opened it, and took out a wad of bills. He glanced over his shoulder periodically as he counted out the amount, then stuck the rest back in the safe and closed and locked the door.

  “Here you go,” Manny said. “Ten percent recovery fee. Wanna count it?”

  Wolf did as he stood there, then said, “How about tossing in a little extra for the broken window?”

  Manny snorted. “You’re joking, right? That’s the price of doing business.”

  Wolf didn’t feel like arguing or admitting that Trackdown, Inc. needed the money after their disastrous trip to Mexico. Instead, he asked Manny what else he had open.

  “I gotta call the clerk’s office later on this afternoon,” he said. “See who skipped out on me. I’ll get you something.”

  “We could use something substantial.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Manny said. “But with Mac being out and you working by yourself and seeing as how you can’t pack no heat, I got to be very selective.” He opened the lid of the box and began perusing what was left of the donuts. “After all, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt, or nothing.�
��

  “Yeah, right,” Wolf said, feeling the sting in his side getting worse by the minute.

  “I’m serious,” Manny said, deciding on a chocolate frosted. “You and Mac are two of my favorite people. The best of the best.”

  Wolf said nothing.

  Manny shrugged and picked off what appeared to be a hair on his donut. “I feel bad enough at what happened to you two down in Cancun, even though it wasn’t me that sent you guys down there.” He brushed his fingers on a corner of his shirt. “I mean, I kinda had a hand in it.”

  Wolf nodded. It wasn’t a trip he was likely to forget. “Manny, look. We need the work. We never got paid what we were owed on that one.”

  “Yeah, well, that ain’t my fault.” He bit into the donut and raised the index finger of his right hand. It was stained with chocolate frosting.

  “Hey,” Wolf said. “I asked you before if you remembered the name of that law firm that hired us to go down there.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well,” Wolf said. “Do you remember the name of it?”

  Manny shook his head. “Sure don’t. Alls I remember is that Teddy said they was from New York. But they mighta give me a card or something. I’ll look around for it.” He stuffed more of the donut into his mouth and chewed. “Too bad we can’t ask him. He was the one that actually sent you down there. Hey, I tell you he got killed at the conference?”

  “Yeah,” Wolf said. “You did. Several times.”

  “Fell down a flight of stairs right there in the hotel.” He shook his head again. “Who’d a thunk it? You just never know.” Manny took another bite and continued talking with his mouth full. “Tell you what I’ll do. I got a couple simple cases that should be like a walk in the park for you.” He opened another drawer and removed two manila envelopes. “Here, work on these.”

  “Thanks,” Wolf said, accepting the files.

  “And I might have something in the works for you as soon as Mac gets back in action, though. Got a call from a pal of mine in Vegas. He posted bond for a big-time slime ball. A fucking attorney, no less. Rumor has it the dude might be hiding out around here somewheres.”

  “Who is it? What’s his name?”

  Manny shook his head. “Huh-un. I’m still looking into it.”

  Which means, Wolf thought, that you’re still angling for a piece of the pie.

  “But, in the meantime.” Manny popped the remainder of the donut into his mouth, then brushed his hands together sending a shower of powdered sugar and flecks of chocolate over the sea of paperwork littering the top of his desk. He pulled open a side drawer, looked in, frowned, and slammed it shut. What he saw in the next drawer made him smile.

  “Here you go,” he said, reaching downward.

  He straightened up, his padded chair groaning in protest with the movement, flashed a grin and tossed a roll of duct tape onto the desktop.

  “For fixing the window on the Escalade.”

  “Thanks,” Wolf said.

  He started to walk away when Manny said, “Hey, wait.”

  Wolf turned and watched the huge man scoop the last remaining donuts from the box, shake the crumbs into a wastebasket and hand the empty box across the desk.

  “What’s this for?” Wolf asked.

  “Tape it in the window,” Manny said, picking up a donut with an array of red and green sprinkling.

  The hot air rushing in through the broken window made a hell of a racket on the drive back to McNamara’s place, not to mention letting the air conditioning out and the hot air in, but Wolf was barely cognizant of it. Instead, the memory of the Mexico disaster of a three weeks ago, and the names involved, kept playing over and over in his mind like an unpleasant tune he couldn’t forget: Eagan, Cummins, Nasim, and Zerbe. Four of the men he’d crossed paths with south of the border.

  And the one he hadn’t: Von Dien

  It was unfamiliar but the most ominous.

  Who’s Von Dien?

  He asked Eagan that question as his foe lay dying at the base of a Mayan pyramid. Eagan’s cryptic answer had troubled Wolf for weeks: Your worst nightmare.

  What the hell did that mean?

  He and Mac had traveled down south of the border to apprehend a fugitive child molester and ended up getting in way over their heads. There was way more to it than they’d been told, and even now Wolf still wasn’t sure what all was involved. Ironically, it was also tied to the incident in Iraq four years ago that had robbed him of his military career. He’d started that day as Staff Sergeant Steven Wolf, decorated U.S. Army Ranger and ended up accused of murdering three Iraqi civilians and charged with dereliction of duty for causing the death of one of his squad members. The pisser was that the head injury Wolf had sustained had partially robbed him of the memory of what actually happened.

  Five, ten, maybe as much as fifteen minutes was a total blank. He wasn’t sure exactly how much, so he’d settled on the number eight. Eight missing minutes that held the key. He could remember up to a certain point, going back into that house and seeing Eagan, a member of a PMC group called the Vipers, and Cummins, a fat-ass first lieutenant from Military Intelligence, interrogating the Iraqis … The three of them of them on their knees with their hands tied behind their backs chanting Allah akbar, God is great, over and over. The poor fuckers must have known they were on their way to meet their seventy-two virgins.

  Then the pain from getting hit and the rest of it was a blank ... Nothing … Just a solid white wall with nothing on it.

  Sometimes in his dreams, an unknown hand would begin scrawling some graffiti on that wall but he could never read it, like it was in was in Arabic or something else that was undecipherable.

  The rest was history and a sad history at that.

  The incompetent JAG lawyer urging his to take the Alford plea—pleading guilty while still maintaining your innocence because the prosecution had overwhelming evidence against you, the four years at Leavenworth, emerging as an ex-con with a dishonorable discharge. It was the last one that stung the most. Wolf had stepped off the reservation and entered the army at eighteen, intent on making something of himself and excelled through Basic, AIT, jump school, and Ranger training. Not bad for a half-Indian with an alcoholic father who’d crashed his pickup truck into a cement porch at ninety miles per hour. Now the decorations he’d earned, the silver star, his jump wings, his stripes … they were all stripped from his now slick-sleeved uniform.

  It had seemed like a new start when Mac, his Green Beret surrogate father and mentor, picked him up outside the prison that day and offered to tutor him to become a full-fledged Bail Bond Enforcement Agent. Mac had spent his whole life in the army and had started Trackdown, Inc. as a way of filling the action void in retirement.

  But they’d gotten more than they’d bargained for on that Mexico trip. It had turned into a brutal array of shootouts, dead bodies, and betrayal, with Mac getting shot and Wolf coming full circle to once again meet the same bastards who’d set him up in Iraq.

  Eagan and Cummins.

  He could still remember the sight of Cummins and Zerbe, another of the duplicitous crew that betrayed them down there, hovering over the slanted stones of the pyramid in that helicopter before disappearing into the night sky.

  Who’s Von Dien?

  Your worst nightmare.

  What did that mean, and how did it all tie together?

  He didn’t know much but decided to concentrate on what he did know.

  He knew some of the players. Zerbe, that private dick who’d met them down in Mexico. What was his first name?

  Jim? Jonas?

  No, Jason, he decided.

  Jason Zerbe, private investigator … South African transplant … based out where? That was still a mystery.

  Wolf allowed himself a cynical smile as he recalled the man’s box-like physique in that white Panama hat and dirty light-colored sports jacket. He’d worn what appeared to be prescription sunglasses even at night and when they were inside, he smelled like
a combination of body odor and motor oil.

  A private dick, all right. A dick in every sense of the word.

  He’d mentioned being from South Africa but not where he was based out of. He’d purportedly been hired by that law firm that was supposed to be representing the victim’s family in a child molestation case. That one guy, Reynolds, had given them a card with the law firm’s name and address. Mac had lost it in the confusion of his emergency room visit, and Manny, who’d made the introductions that got them involved, said he couldn’t find his, either.

  Alls I remember is that Teddy said they was from New York.

  Some help he was and his buddy, Teddy, the human scarecrow, was no longer among the living to be consulted.

  A law firm, Wolf thought. Cummins had been in Military Intelligence in Iraq. A reservist, but wasn’t he a lawyer in civilian life? Could he be connected to the same law firm?

  It was a tenuous connection, considering the fat coward had turned up next to Zerbe in that departing helicopter, but a connection worth looking into. The fact that the three principal players from Iraq, Eagan, Nasim, and Cummins had all shown up for round two four years later was too great to be a coincidence. Wolf had never believed in those anyway.

  But how did it all fit together?

  It was a conundrum, all right. A mystery wrapped in a riddle inside of a conundrum.

  Wasn’t that what Churchill once said?

  Wolf felt like a masculine Dorothy stumbling around a violent and perverse version of The Wizard of Oz. Teddy, the scarecrow, had tumbled face-first down a set of stairs, Zerbe, the tin man was wearing prescription sunglasses and a white panama hat, Cummins, the cowardly lawyer was no lion, that was for sure. And the man behind the curtain, Von Dien, was turning out to be a real wizard at staying hidden.

  The familiar gas station and strip mall popped into view, ending his reverie.

  Wolf saw the familiar, macadamized road turn off that ran perpendicular to the highway and he activated his turn signal. The wheels of the Escalade crunched over the stones and it once again brought back unpleasant memories. Mexico had been full of gravel roads. Wolf was dreading showing Mac the damage to the Escalade. The big SUV was his pride and joy.