by K R Hill
“Thanks, Lieutenant. But—” Connor bit his lip, twisted the wheel.
After a moment, Dalton said: “But you’re having second thoughts about making a family.”
Connor nodded. “I couldn’t protect that little boy.”
“Hey,” said Dalton. “We did a lot of good down there. We killed some bad motherfuckers for Uncle Sam. But we paid the price That memory scarred us.”
“Yeah.” Connor glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Bartholomew swaying on the back seat, the music from his ear buds sounding faint and tinny.
“Listen, I know this sounds crazy from a soldier, but the only remedy I ever found was love. If that memory can make you afraid to love, afraid to have a sweet, innocent baby, then the bad guys won.”
“That’s the best you got?”
Dalton nodded. “What do you want, a catchy little phrase on a magnet to stick on your fridge?”
“I want you to tell me how to get past it or work it through. You were my commanding officer. You’re supposed to be Yoda.”
“Yoda? You kidding me? I’m just a guy sorting through all the crap too.”
“We’re getting close. You want to do this thing?”
“That’s why I’m here?”
“That’s the address the salon owner gave me.” Dalton pointed at a house as they drove past.
“The one with the ice cream truck in the driveway.” Connor glanced in the side mirror and turned a corner. “I’ll bet he’s using that ice cream truck to keep the paintings cool. Bartholomew, that’s your objective. Get in that truck and get the paintings.”
When Bartholomew didn’t respond, Connor tapped Dalton on the arm, and pointed a thumb over the seat.
Dalton reached and yanked an ear bud out of Bartholomew’s ear. “Listen up,” he said.
Connor repeated what he said about the ice cream truck.
Bartholomew nodded. “Are you sure these things will cut the lock?” He lifted up a pair of bolt cutters.”
“Easy,” said Dalton, raising a hand to the steering wheel. “Slow and easy. Use your turn signals before every single turn. We don’t want to get pulled over.”
Connor glanced over his shoulder. “Those are the best bolt cutters I could find. They should handle any padlock.”
They parked at the end of a street lined with orange trees and palms. The high metal wall of a junk yard stood behind the houses on one side of the street, and the smell of motor oil drifted through the air. Music played on a far-off radio, and a dog barked, but not a person was outside.
As they approached the house, Connor said: “Remember, this guy’s a thug.”
“I can take care of myself,” said Bartholomew.
“Stop.” Dalton held out his arms. “Listen, this isn’t boxing. This guy is a killer, a street fighter who’s survived in the worst environment for more than a decade. He’s going to be heavily armed. There’s no trick he won’t use. If he comes at you, don’t even toy with the idea of taking him alive. Put him down. You got that?”
Connor nodded. “We got it. If confronted, don’t take a chance.”
“If I get a clean shot, I’ll hit him with the Taser. Don’t take chances.”
They turned into the front yard and walked up the driveway. Connor raised his hand and shook two fingers toward the back door.
Dalton took out the Taser, blinking both eyes at the same time to show that he understood, and walked silently to the back door.
Connor raised his hand again and made the sign of scissors.
Bartholomew nodded and walked to the ice cream truck.
There at the corner of the house, Connor squatted in the dirt, one knee in the soil, and waited. After a moment he heard faint clicking noises coming from the ice cream truck, then a loud click, followed by an alarm.
In between the beeps of the siren, he heard Bartholomew’s heavy footfalls inside the ice cream truck. Things banged about. The truck moved up and down.
Connor stood and drew his weapon, finger held beside the trigger. He scanned the street right and left; his shoulder pressed against the stucco of the house.
Two men shouted in Spanish from the neighbor’s yard. One of them raised up above the cinderblock wall, dropped out of sight, popped up a second later with a shotgun. The neighbor shouted and fired a shot.
The window above Connor exploded. Glass fell over his head and shoulders.
“I got them,” shouted Bartholomew, bending low as he ran beside the house, a crate in his arms.
The neighbor ran to the sidewalk, leveled the shotgun at them, fired again and dove behind the car in his driveway.
Connor, Dalton and Bartholomew ran and dropped down on their bellies behind the ice cream truck.
“Who the hell is that guy? He almost killed me.”
“I was ready to enter the house when he started shooting,” said Dalton. “Damn, that alarm is freaking me out.” He stood up and fired four rounds into a box mounted on the truck, and the alarm stopped.
“I don’t want no—”
Falsen burst out the front door and clicked off five rounds as he ran across the front yard.
One of the tires on the ice cream truck blew out. Another shot popped the windshield and threw glass onto the driveway. Connor jumped to his feet and ran into the fire, shooting as he went.
Falsen dropped out of sight behind a Prius. The side window exploded as he jumped into the driver seat.
Connor ran at the Prius as it tried to do a burnout, tires chirping on the pavement. It swerved and crashed into an old pickup truck, lunged forward and headed straight up the driveway. Connor thought it was going to crash through the garage door until it made a hard right and drove through the sprinklers that were throwing water over the sparkling grass. It continued across the neighbor’s driveway, through their desert landscape front yard, knocked over a huge cactus, jumped the curb and sped down the road.
“Go! Get to the car,” shouted Connor, waving his gun.
Dalton came running down the driveway with a green duffel hanging over his shoulder and bouncing around. When the two men reached the sidewalk, the neighbor came out with the shotgun and leveled it at them, but Bartholomew tackled him from behind. The guy landed on his back. The shotgun discharged into the door of the car beside him.
Connor reached the SUV. He grabbed the keys off the floorboard and started the engine. Bartholomew and Dalton unloaded in the cargo area and jumped in. The wheels were spinning before they closed their doors. The SUV swerved, chirped the rear tires, and sped down the street.
“I got the cash,” shouted Dalton.
“Wow, I knocked the shotgun guy on his ass,” said Bartholomew. He slid forward on the seat and looked at the street behind him.
By the time Connor’s SUV reached the corner, it was racing along at fifty miles an hour. He locked up the brakes, skidded into a four way stop, looked right and left. Down at the end of the road a Prius flashed its tail lights and swerved into a driveway.
“Turn,” said Dalton. “There it is.”
Connor drove up the steep rise of the driveway and turned to the right to avoid potholes filled with trash.
“What?” Connor drove slowly through the parking lot filled with cars. Behind one or two of the vehicles, men unloaded toolboxes. Two men lifted car tires from a wagon, and threw them into the back of a pickup.
“It’s a junkyard,” said Connor, pointing at the entrance.
“Where’d he go?” Connor leaned on the steering wheel as he searched, creeping through the parking lot at a slow roll.
Two rows over, the Prius smoked its tires in reverse and shot out of a parking space. It crashed into a parked car, spun its tires in the forward gear, and raced through the lot. When it reached the end of the parking lot, it crashed into a diesel truck with several wrecked cars on its back, and kept going.
“He’s coming down the next row.”
Dalton jerked his hands up and slammed his feet against the floorboard to brace himself. “What
are you doing?” he shouted.
Connor turned to the right and slammed into the back of an empty little import and pushed it across the parking lot, out of its space, its tires locked and skidding across the asphalt.
“I’m going to lock him in,” shouted Connor.
The Prius skidded to a stop and Falsen jumped out and disappeared in the maze of parked vehicles.
“Get out,” said Connor, pushing Dalton toward the passenger door. “We have to flush him out on foot.”
Connor fell into the parking lot, crouched down low, peering around vehicles, trying to locate Falsen.
“Bartholomew,” said Connor. “Take the paintings and cash to the garage. The police will have a description of the vehicle, so take side streets, slow and easy and park it inside. You got it?”
Bartholomew climbed into the driver’s seat and shoved the gear shift into reverse. “I’ll drive like a little old lady.”
Connor ran across the parking lot and squatted behind a station wagon, raised up quickly, glanced through the windshield, and dropped down.
Dalton ran over and knelt beside him. “Did you see where he went?”
“No, but we’re going to get this bastard.”
“Tell me again why he’s so important.”
Connor turned. “If we turn him against Ghrazenko, we save ourselves a lot of trouble.”
“Oh,” said Dalton, dropping onto his butt. “You mean we won’t have to kidnap people and run through stinking junkyards?”
“It’s a sunny day in So Cal. What else are we going to be doing?” Before he got an answer, he jumped up and ran toward the junkyard entrance.
As he pushed through the turnstile, Dalton came up behind him and asked: “Can we get close enough to use the Taser?”
“I hope so.”
The cars sat in rows so customers could push tires and fenders and engine parts out of the way and walk from one to the other. Each vehicle looked as though a mechanical vulture had picked at it.
Connor walked along, glancing up one row after another, until he came to a row where a man was sitting on a tire with his hands in the air. The second he saw guy with his hands in the air, Connor hid behind the remains of a white SUV.
“He’s up here,” he said as Dalton stepped beside him.
Connor leaned forward and looked up the row. “I’m tired of this. Let’s just get Falsen and get out of here.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
Connor smiled. “Easy. You to run up the aisle firing shots. That’ll draw his attention. I’ll slip behind him and zap his ass.”
Dalton wiped his mouth. “I think it would be better if you ran up the aisle firing your weapon.”
“Good. Now you’re thinking.” Connor took out his gun, ejected the clip and counted the rounds remaining. “Okay, you get one shot with the Taser. If you miss him, one of us eats a bullet.”
“I’m right on top of you.”
“One, two,” and before Connor reached number three, he fired a shot into the air and sprinted up the row between the junk cars. His feet splashed in oily puddles. He zigzagged as he ran, stepping over discarded hoods and radiators, counting each round as he fired. He had two bullets left by the time he reached the mechanic with his hands held in the air. Connor looked at the guy and shrugged, as if to ask: where’s the gunman?
The mechanic pointed with both hands as if jabbing them into somebody’s chest.
Connor looked up the row, toward a twelve-foot-high fence of aluminum siding.
Falsen jumped from the top of one car to the top of another, until he was right next to the fence. There he paused, jumped and grabbed the top of the fence with his hands, and managed to swing until he got one leg hooked over the top. He was pulling himself over when Dalton fired the Taser.
Falsen shook, screamed and fell, and crashed onto the top of the car that he had jumped from.
Connor grabbed a junkyard cart from the mechanic, and ran over and helped Connor load Falsen onto it. They wheeled him along the main aisle and out the front door.
When Connor got out into the parking lot, he walked up to a ratty old junkyard truck, and tapped on the side window.
An old black man with a scruffy white beard took a bite of a sandwich and looked at Connor while chewing.
Connor reached into his pocket and lifted up a wad of bills and spread them out like a deck of cards.
The driver smiled, leaned across the seat and struggled to roll down the passenger window. He cursed, rolled it up a bit and down again. When the window was half down, the junkman said: “Why, I didn’t know if you spoke my language.”
Connor counted out five one hundred-dollar bills and dropped them on the seat. “I speak green, sir. It’s international.”
The driver picked up the bills and counted them with his index finger, moving the finger from one to another. “Now look at all those Franklins. That just warms my heart. Yes sir.”
Two squad cars came up the driveway and Connor crouched.
The expression on the driver’s face changed from a smile to concern. He glanced at the squad cars, and back at Connor, and said: “I enjoy this language we’re speaking, and if these bills have brothers to go along with them, why, I’ll bet we could just roll right past those two shiny police cars without anybody saying boo. No sir, them police never do bother with me. Something about a greasy old truck, makes them stay well away.”
Connor counted out the last of his hundreds, but came up short with only three. “Dalton,” he said. “Do you have any cash?”
Dalton opened his wallet and counted a hundred and sixty dollars.
Connor snatched the money from his hand and dropped the lot on the seat. “That’s four hundred and sixty. With the other five it’s nine hundred and sixty dollars. Take it or leave it. I’ll take my money somewhere else and get a ride.” He grabbed the bills.
The driver smiled a big smile and revealed a missing tooth. “I think we’ll do just fine. You boys load whatever you need into the back, and we’ll be rolling on down the road, nice and easy.”
Chapter 29
The junkman stopped at every turn, scratched his beard, looked right and left before driving on.
Connor moaned each time the truck stopped.
“Just let the guy drive, would you?” said Dalton.
When they got close to the doctor’s workshop, Connor directed the driver to turn up the alley and stop at the graffiti-covered garage door. Connor and Dalton jumped out and pulled Falsen out of the back.
One of the neighbors was rounding up his trash cans and looked over. “Whoa,” said the neighbor, backing away.
“Come on, Johnny.” Connor laughed and patted Falsen on the back. “The bachelor party’s over. Don’t throw up on my shoes again.”
“Oh, man,” said the neighbor, grabbing two trash cans and forcing them through the gate at the same time. “That’s gross. I’m out of here.”
The doctor opened the alley door and laughed. “Well, you two missed all the fun.” He pointed across the garage.
Nick was hiding behind one of the wrecks, holding a wrench in his hand.
Falsen’s woman, hands cuffed through a chair that she carried behind her, cursed through a gag and chased Nick around the car.
“What is happening?” asked Connor.
“Skinny Nick tried to secure her to a chair. She broke loose and has been chasing him around the garage. Oh, I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.”
“Get her away from me,” shouted Nick, both hands on a fender as he moved right and then left.
“Don’t let her push you around, Nick.” Dalton laughed.
“Okay, that’s enough.” Connor marched over, grabbed the chair behind the woman, and led her to the car hoist where he handcuffed her beside Falsen. After ratchetting the cuffs tight, and tugging on them a couple of times, he stood up. “We got them both. Let’s get this thing rolling.”
***
Connor, Dalton, Nick and the doctor, gathered
in the office. Dalton stood at the white board, his marker squeaking as he wrote.
Connor jumped to his feet. “Okay guys, we need to get that info from Teddy Ghrazenko. Falsen struck first and took the cash and paintings. Now we have them. That’s major leverage. We also have the armored car money. But listen up. I sent Bartholomew to do reconnaissance, and he says that Teddy has retreated inside his office building. That’s understandable. He’s under attack and he knows it.”
Dalton drank from a water bottle and squished it in his hand. “So how do we get to him?”
Connor smiled and shook his head. “We just went through hell rounding up Falsen and his woman, right Nick?”
“She was trying to bite me.”
Connor laughed. “How do we get to Teddy? If we don’t get the cartel names, this was all for nothing.”
Dalton threw the bottle into the trash. “Just like you said. We get Falsen and Zakai to work for us.”
Everyone spoke at once.
“Wait.” Connor raised his arms. “Zakai has access to Ghrazenko’s building. If he gets us in, we get Teddy easy as pie.”
Dalton slapped his hands together. “Do you think we can turn him?”
The doctor laughed and struck his cane on the desk. “Ha! You’re talking about a sadistic killer. Do you think you’re going to turn him on a dime?”
“Yes.” Connor pointed. “We use the chink in his armor: the daughter. He’s tired and old. I think he wants to enjoy his old age without worrying about the Ghrazenkos coming to visit. This is his chance to break free.”
Connor walked to the white board and erased a section. “I like it, but we have to move before word reaches Ghrazenko senior in Germany that his paintings are gone.”
“That’s our angle.” Dalton snatched the marker from Connor’s hand. “We offer him a chance to get the paintings before Daddy finds out. He gives us the names, and we return the paintings before his own syndicate slashes his throat.”
“Can it be that easy?” asked the doctor.
“Let’s do it.” Connor drew on the whiteboard. “Look here,” he said, drawing a map. “This is 2nd St., Belmont shore. That’s where we’re going to take down Zakai.”