The Ruthless

by David Putnam

  Nigel said, “Hey, hey, what’s going on? Lemme go. Karl? Hey, Karl, do something. Help.”

  I spoke for the first time. “Let him go.”

  They made it to the bolted door. Jumbo said, “Unlock the door and we’ll let the dipshit go.”

  Before I could say another word, Bart threw the bolt and unlocked the door. Johnny Sin shoved Nigel. He flew, hit the floor, and slid.

  I hurried back to the office with Black Bart close on my heels. We arrived just in time to see Jumbo and Johnny Sin walk out of view and into the shadows.

  I said, “They know about the cameras and where they’re placed. That’s how they got up on us without us seeing them.”

  Bart nodded. “We have to watch our step; these guys are good.”

  Yeah, maybe too good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THE NEXT MORNING at seven someone stood on the front porch of our Nord home and rang the doorbell again and again. I shuffled out of my room rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, dressed only in boxer shorts and a tee shirt. I stopped in the kitchen and grabbed my .357 from on top of the fridge. I peeked out the side window.

  Wicks.

  Parked at the curb was his sleek black county car, replete with tire iron pockmarks and side windows covered with cardboard and crisscrossed with gray duct tape. Behind his car sat a marked black-and-white with two uniform deputies sitting inside. What was with the deputies? What was going on?

  I sighed and opened the door. Wicks didn’t wait to be invited, he just shoved on past. I had Junior by the collar, restraining him. He let loose with a low growl at the unwanted intrusion and nipped at Wicks as he went by. I half-dragged Junior over to the couch and told him to sit and then to lie down. He obeyed. I didn’t know why he didn’t like Wicks. Wicks had never done anything to him.

  “Curb your dog. He better not bite me. It’ll be his last conscious act. You have any coffee? I don’t smell any coffee. Hey, you just gettin’ up?”

  Bold talk. If he tried to hurt Junior, friend or no friend, we’d go to war.

  “Oh, good morning to you too. Why are those deputies outside my house? What’s going on?”

  But I knew. Wicks wanted me to go with him to hit a house and he had brought the marked unit to cover the back while we hit the front. We had done it that way many times in the past; we’d just never started out from my house before.

  “Take a seat,” I said. “I’ll put on some coffee. Why are you so hyped up?” He got this way when he was hunting a difficult target and the trail suddenly turned hot. I scooped ground coffee into Dad’s old percolator, added water, and plugged it in. I came over and sat at the table. Dad came in wearing a tattered robe I gave him for Christmas eight or nine years earlier. He should’ve tossed it out long ago, and I should’ve been thoughtful enough to give him another one. Next Christmas. He saw Wicks. “Can I make you some breakfast, Lieutenant?”

  Dad didn’t care much for Wicks. He just didn’t understand him. Even so, Dad kept up his facade of hospitality.

  “No, thanks. We don’t have time.” He said to me, “Get dressed; we have to roll.”

  I took two cups down from the cupboard. “What’s going on?”

  He glared and said nothing. He wanted his subordinates to jump to his every command. I said, “I don’t work for you anymore, remember?”

  I caught Dad out of the corner of my eye. He smiled.

  Wicks stood. “Is that right? Then I guess you’re no longer privy to the investigation. Is that the way you want to play it?”

  “Quit being a horse’s ass and tell me what’s going on.”

  He sat back down at the table and smiled. “You were right.”

  Dad shrugged. “Of course he was.”

  Wicks said, “Do you mind?” He turned back to me. “The entire investigation has shifted to this Jamar and La Vonn lead, the one we scared up at the jail yesterday.”

  “Good. What happened that made it heat up?”

  “The Deputy Chief wants you to have twenty-four-hour protection, hence the knuckle draggers out at the curb—they’ve been detached from SEB. You should be honored; they’re the best the department can provide.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Wicks reached into his suit coat pocket and came out with a Polaroid picture. I recognized it before I even saw what it depicted. Lead investigators took Polaroid pictures of murder victims to carry with them for the duration of the investigation to refresh the memory of a witness or suspect. This was one such photo. I didn’t want to see it; I couldn’t handle even one more. I’d grown tired of the senseless hate and wasted lives that photos like these represented.

  Wicks set it on our table faceup.

  I instantly recognized the victim, Twyla. Some evil bastard had shot her in the forehead and discarded her body on a rotting pile of Chinese food in a back-alley dumpster.

  My throat went dry. “What happened?”

  “Going on your theory, I remembered this girl was with you and the judge that day on 10th and Crenshaw when the judge gunned that thug Jamar. She was your unregistered informant you wouldn’t reveal to anyone, not even me. You didn’t tell me until later, remember? I ran her name and found out she was a victim of a 187.”

  “When?”

  “That’s where it gets good.”

  “Gets good? Really? We’re talking about a senseless murder here.”

  “Oh, get over yourself.”

  Dad took a step closer. “Maybe you better leave, Lieutenant.”

  I waved at Dad and said to Wicks, “Tell me.”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “So you’re saying someone is taking out everyone who was out there that day? Anyone who had anything to do with the death of that gun thug Jamar?”

  “Exactly. The black-and-white is at your curb for the duration. So from now until we solve this thing and get this killer grappled up, you are either with me or you’re here where we can keep an eye on you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  THAT WASN’T GOING to happen, not with the big gun deal in the offing, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “What about Nicky Rivers?” She was the deputy DA who was also with us on 10th Street, the day of the shooting.

  “She left the DA’s office and went to work for the feds. She’s an AUSA now working out of Vegas. I got Vegas Metro watching over her. Well, Metro and U.S. Marshals.”

  “What happened to her marriage?”

  “They ended up splitting after all.”

  This had been a sore spot with Wicks. He was friends with Nicky’s husband, John Lau, when I’d been dating her. Wicks thought that I had violated the unwritten rule about stepping out with another cop’s wife. And I had, in a way. She’d never told me she was married, let alone to whom, until I’d developed a crush on her, one difficult to walk away from. She’d been separated pending divorce, but they had gotten back together to try and make a go of it. I was sorry about Nicky’s marriage, that I might’ve had a hand in its dissolution, and needed to change the subject so I wouldn’t dwell on a past misstep. “What happened with Sams?”

  “Derek?” Dad asked. He came over the rest of the way and sat down at the table, his eyes anxious, pleading with Wicks to tell him. “What about Derek?”

  I shouldn’t have brought it up around Dad, but he would’ve heard about it sooner or later.

  “Yeah, you were right about that, too. He’s in the wind. I put out a BOLO on him. It won’t take long. I’ll find his ass, and he’ll wish he never crossed me.”

  For the first time after all the years of working with him, I heard the real meaning of Wicks’ words, a tone, the manner in which he regularly spoke. The way he so cavalierly talked about running a criminal down and shooting him, how easy it was for him to put the boot to someone, to take a human life. Had I been similarly cold and callous while running with him? I didn’t think so at the time but maybe now looking back … well, I liked myself a little less.

  “BOLO?” Dad asked. “In
the wind?”

  I translated. “Derek was released from his trial with a promise of a lighter sentence if he helped find the person or persons responsible for the killing of the judge and his wife. He signed a contract and it was approved by the DA and a judge.”

  “That’s wrong, Son. I can’t tell you how wrong that is. It shouldn’t happen that way. That boy needs to pay for what he did. One way or another, that boy needs to pay. He killed that poor man and admitted to it.”

  Dad said it with an edge I wasn’t used to hearing from him. He had a strong understanding of how the world worked, or used to. In the last six months after the loss of Albert and Olivia, he’d stepped out of the everyday rat race and let it run him over. Not his fault. That had never happened to him before, and now he was acting out of character.

  Dad said, “Bruno, how is that possible? Our justice system is broken.” I cringed when he called me by name; it meant his anger had ratcheted up one more level and I had become the focus of that anger.

  Wicks said, “It’s called ‘in the interest of justice,’ old man.”

  “Shut up,” I yelled at Wicks. “You have no right to talk to him like that.”

  I wanted to tell Dad it was Wicks who’d made the blunder and unleashed Derek back on the streets to prey on the unsuspecting, but I didn’t. Not to save Wicks from the embarrassment but to keep peace in our little kitchen. I didn’t want Dad to grab Wicks around the neck and throttle him. At that moment, the way I felt about Wicks, I might have let Dad do it. Maybe helped him.

  “What else do you have on Twyla’s murder? Anything linking it to La Vonn?”

  “Bruno, we’re talking about Derek here,” Dad said. “You drop everything and go after him. I mean it. I’m not messing around here—get after him and put him back where he belongs, in a cage.”

  “We’ll get to him.” I couldn’t tell Dad that if I went after Derek Sams, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself, that I would catch up to him and this time the outcome would be more than three crushed fingers.

  Wicks waited to see if we’d finished discussing something that was of no interest to him. He saw his opening and said, “La Vonn is off the grid. He dropped out of sight three years ago, right after the judge did that shooting on 10th. I have the entire task force looking for him, and they’ve come up with nothing, nada, zip. Have you checked the gyms like you said you would?”

  “I got tied up. That’s next on the agenda.”

  Without a word, Dad got up and left. I worried about him. Maybe he would get dressed, have breakfast, and go over and see Albert. That would take his mind off Sams. I had the gun deal and La Vonn to keep my mind off Derek.

  My big problem would be breaking away from Wicks long enough to make the “noonish” meeting with Jumbo and Johnny Sin at his auto parts shop in Norwalk. Wicks wouldn’t be fooled too easily, not this time, especially if he thought of me as bait for La Vonn. In Wicks’ skewed perception of life, there was nothing more fun than a hunt that involved a staked goat. And as it turned out this time, I was the goat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I SHOWERED AND dressed and found Wicks in the living room, pacing. Junior Mint sat by the couch and watched Wicks go back and forth. Junior looked on as if present at a tennis match and Wicks was the tennis ball Junior wanted to sink his teeth in.

  Wicks spun around. “Took you long enough. Let’s roll.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He waved his arm. “I’ve been thinking about it. I got the entire task force looking for this La Vonn character. I just decided that we’re going after Sams. I can’t believe I was that wrong about him. I still think he can get close to Little Genie’s organization, and someone in that gang will know what happened to La Vonn. If he can’t, then I’ll still have the pleasure of squeezing his little pin head until it pops, teach him a lesson for not answering my page.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go after Derek.”

  “Why?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t trust myself, and at the same time I couldn’t think of a logical reason why we couldn’t go after him. Wicks didn’t know what I knew about Derek, what Derek had done to my grandchild. If Wicks found out, he’d take full advantage of my rage. He’d wind me up like a little tin soldier, turn me loose, and follow along, the hunter behind the hound stepping over the carnage I’d leave in my wake. It wouldn’t take much. I wanted to take up that mantle and right a wrong.

  The cell phone on his belt rang. He grabbed it. “Wicks.”

  I watched his expression, his eyes. After a few seconds, they took on a gleam I recognized from years past. My blood ran hot and sent a tingling up my spine: this was it. The call that would put us onto La Vonn, the guy who’d brutally gunned down the judge and his wife, Jean Anne.

  A smile crept across his face. He said into the phone, “Where the hell have you been, you little turd? I told you to check in every four hours no matter what. I told you what I would do to you if you didn’t. And what? It’s been twelve hours now?”

  Derek Sams.

  My excitement shifted to the pent-up rage. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to suppress it without giving it a natural and obvious place to vent. Derek was no longer in jail where I couldn’t reach him. He was out on the street, free as a bird and subject to all the dangers and pitfalls that same freedom allowed. He could easily die in an accident, a dislodged third-floor air conditioner, in a car crash, falling down some stairs, or from a more common form of lead poisoning that came with a great deal of satisfaction on my part.

  Wicks caught the shift in my expression, turned his shoulder away, and lowered his voice. Wicks knew how I felt about Sams, but only as a disgruntled father-in-law. He knew that I blamed Sams for my daughter Olivia’s death and couldn’t prove it. Wicks didn’t care as long as he first got the information he wanted from Sams. In fact, once Sams was no longer useful, Wicks would gladly purchase a front-row ticket to watch what I had in mind.

  “No,” Wicks said into the phone. “You stay right there. I’m coming to you. What?” Wicks listened then said, “You little shitass, you don’t get to dictate the rules. I’ll tell you how it’s going work, not the other way around. You sit your ass down; I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up, turned back, and smiled hugely, the same as if he had Tweety bird feathers hanging from his mouth. “I guess you know who that was?”

  I nodded, unable to speak for fear of letting slip my deadly intent.

  Wicks came close and put his hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, my friend. Derek said he doesn’t want you anywhere near him or he won’t tell us a thing. And you know me—normally I wouldn’t let a lowlife like this guy dictate the game. But I still need this puke and if I take you with … well, you know how that scenario is going turn out, blood and bone all over the place.” He held up his hand. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, I’m just saying not right now.”

  Dad had been standing in the kitchen that adjoined the living room, listening to the entire exchange. “How do you live with yourself? How do you look in the mirror every morning, Lieutenant? Derek has no right being out on the street. He needs to be—”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Johnson, but this is the life we chose. We don’t make the rules. We’re given the little pewter top hat, a set of dice, and we move around the board according to set rules.”

  What a hypocrite. Wicks rarely kept his Crayola within the lines.

  Black Bart had said something similar, though, when I’d asked him about betrayal, how we could befriend someone and in the end snatch away priceless years of that person’s life by putting him behind bars. I could only hope I never became so cynical and jaded.

  Wicks made a quick move and headed for the front door. Junior got up, ready to take a bite out of his butt.

  “Junior, sit.” He turned to look at me, then back at Wicks, trying to decide if the penalty would be worth it if he disobeyed. He made the right choice and sat.

  At
the door, Wicks said to me, “Stay right here. I’ll call you with what Sams has for us and then we’ll roll on it. And, Bruno, this time answer your damn cell phone when I call. That thing is no good if you don’t take it with you.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  Dad stared, waiting for me to say something about Wicks and how I’d allowed Wicks to let Derek loose again on the public. I didn’t have an answer for him. Oddly, as soon as Wicks left the house, the rage started to bleed off and I could breathe again.

  The cell phone on the kitchen counter buzzed. Wicks. He was checking to see if I’d answer it. I snatched up the phone. “Yeah, yeah, see, I answered it.”

  It was RD from TransWorld. His words caused my knees to go weak. I eased down into the chair, too stunned to reply.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I DROVE AROUND and around Daniel Freeman Hospital parking lot looking for a spot. Under normal circumstances I’d have dumped the Kadett out in front of the emergency room entrance and put a Sheriff’s placard on the dash. But I had to remember my cover. I couldn’t risk crooks I’d dealt with at TW seeing the car. I’d made too many mistakes lately and swore I wouldn’t make another.

  I didn’t know the extent of the injury. RD had said that he didn’t know for sure and to hurry. He tended toward the dramatic. Or maybe I didn’t want it to be bad and that I’d been on the receiving end of bad news too often in the last six months to let my mind accept the truth.

  In order to evade the two knuckle draggers out in front of our home on Nord, I went out the back door then out through the hole in the fence at the back of the property and into the dirt alley. I’d been so focused on what RD had said, I didn’t notice until it was too late that Junior had tagged along.

  In the hospital parking lot, a woman in a small SUV started to back out. I stopped and backed up, waiting for her spot, nervously tapping the steering wheel. Junior sat on the seat next to me, quiet, subdued. He’d read my mood. “Hey, pal, I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have brought you along. No offense, but in this situation, you’re creating a real nuisance.”