The Ruthless

by David Putnam

  “I’d like to ask a big favor,” he said.

  I held up my hand to stop him. “I know what you’re going to ask—and it’s not a good idea for you to be in on the takedown. I think you know why.”

  He lost his smile and moved in closer. “Wouldn’t you want to be in on taking this guy off the street if it was your father lying in there?”

  I had become close friends with the kind of emotions he described. I’d gone after Derek Sams, caught him, and crushed his fingers getting him to admit the worst, the most heinous crime he could have perpetrated upon my family. I now lived with the aftermath of that decision that tore me up inside and went against the strong moral values my father worked so hard to instill. I had trampled all over them.

  And yet, all I could think about was going back and finishing the job. That desire got in the way of all logical thinking.

  “A P-2 in Metro,” I said. “Black Bar … I mean, your father must be real proud.”

  That backed him off and took away the sheen of the vengeance in his eyes. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I still want in.”

  I wouldn’t be able to stop Wicks from doing what Wicks did best. He was going to drop the La Vonn manhunt and go after Johnny Sin. I would have done the same—deal with Johnny first.

  “I’m having the truck held for forensics and—”

  “You’ve recovered the truck? That’s great. My dad speaks highly of you, and I can see why. Who’s the suspect?”

  “I’m not going to tell you his name. There was a blond wig on the front seat that matches with what happened. I know who did this, and as soon as the fingerprints come back from the truck, I’ll be able to get an arrest warrant.”

  “If you know who, then you have to have enough for a probable cause arrest.”

  “Aah, maybe, but if I arrest him now, I won’t have any evidence, and the case will have to depend on a confession until the fingerprints come back. I know this guy; he’s not going to give it up. After an arrest, I’d have to have the fingerprints back in forty-eight hours or he’s going to skate right out the same door he came in. You know how all this works.”

  If there were any fingerprints to be found in the truck. Johnny Sin could’ve been wearing gloves. And so far, Johnny Sin had not made one wrong move.

  “We take him down, I’ll walk the prints through myself. I have a friend in Cal ID.”

  I took him by the arm and glanced over my shoulder as I pulled him aside. “Okay, look, if I bring you into this thing, you have to promise me you’ll do exactly as I say, when I say it.”

  This was a bad idea, but I understood what he was feeling. If I let him in, I’d at least have a chance of controlling what happened. If I didn’t, he’d go out on his own and that would definitely screw everything up.

  He nodded. “No problem, I’ll do whatever you say. Thank you for this.”

  “I’m making a big mistake here and—” I just realized why Black Bart had made me promise not to do the gun deal. It wasn’t to protect me. He didn’t want his son to be in on the takedown; he knew hot emotions during violent confrontations ruined careers.

  “What?”

  “This guy I’m talking about is very, very good. There might not be any fingerprints in that truck. I haven’t had the time to check, and now that I think about it, my guess is the truck’s going to be clean.”

  “But you do know who it is? You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then we can—”

  “Just hold it a minute. Before your dad went into surgery, he made me promise I wouldn’t do this gun deal and—”

  “You have a gun deal in place with this puke?”

  “Yes, and if we can’t make him on what he did to your dad, then we can put him away for a long time on these guns, twenty or thirty years.”

  The only problem was that I gave my word to Black Bart that I wouldn’t do it. But the situation had changed. I had to do the gun deal to control his son. That’s what Bart would want if he were conscious and I had a chance to talk to him. At least that’s what I wanted to believe.

  James Barlow Jr.’s jaw muscle knitted and he spoke through clenched teeth even though he tried not to. “Don’t worry about making the case on what he did to Dad. We get him in custody for the guns, he’ll cop out to what he did. I promise you that.”

  “This is a bad plan.”

  He took hold of my arm and squeezed, his eyes looking down into my soul.

  “Okay, I get it.” I peeled his hand off my arm. “Can you have six members from your team on standby, and I mean on a moment’s notice?”

  He smiled. “I can have as many people as you need suited up and waiting for the phone call.”

  “They need to be heavily armed. This is a gun deal for military-grade weapons. A lot of them.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I know this guy. Once the deal’s set, he’s not going to give me any time to set a trap, so there’s not going to be any preplanning. This is going to be a run-and-gun takedown.”

  “I understand.”

  And I did too. One of LAPD’s finest went down under the truck of a bad guy and they’d move heaven and earth to make it right. As much as I despised Johnny Sin, I wouldn’t want to be him in the next twenty-four hours.

  “I’m leaving here right now and going to set the deal.”

  He nodded, took a cell phone from his pocket, and stepped away.

  “Wait, he might not set it up for a day or two. I don’t know what he has in mind. I’ll push to get it done though, tonight.”

  He held up his hand as he spoke quietly into the phone. He understood and didn’t care. He’d have his people in place even if it took standing ready in shifts and sleeping in their cars on their own time.

  I turned back to look into room 610. Wicks had moved over close to the hospital bed and stood next to the unconscious Black Bart, holding his hand. Wicks wasn’t one to show his emotions.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  WICKS CAME OUT of the hospital room in a rush headed for the door. He didn’t give James Barlow Jr. a second look. He grunted an acknowledgment more at the uniform than the man in it. Did Wicks even know? Couldn’t he see the resemblance? I skip-stepped to keep up with him. “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t answer in his headlong mission to burn down the man who dared cross the line into his world. Halfway to the nurses’ command and control area, I grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Wait.”

  He shrugged out of it. “What?”

  “Where are you going?”

  Nurses and doctors froze at our raised voices.

  “I’m going to TransWorld to get the information on this punk and then I’m going to hunt him down. What did you think I was going to do? You’re welcome to come as long as you stay out of my way and don’t give me any holier-than-thou crap about policy and procedure.”

  “No, you’re not. No cops are allowed on-site at TW. You know how stings work. Someone sees you, you’ll burn the whole operation.”

  He stepped in close, his breath hot with the burnt scent of the little brown cigarettes he constantly smoked. He pointed back to the room. “You think that matters now? You think a sting is more important than what happened to that cop in there?”

  “No, of course not. But you’re not thinking straight.”

  “Oh, is that right, buddy boy? Well, enlighten me. But you got about five seconds, then I’m gone.”

  I lowered my voice. “What? Are you planning to just run him down and gun him?”

  “I can’t believe you’re even asking me that.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  He hesitated, then broke eye contact, uncomfortable with the question.

  I said, “Not an hour ago, I told you I’ve been working this sting. I’m the one who told you about all this, remember? I’m the one dealing with this guy, Johnny Sin, and I’m here to tell you right now we got dick on him. No intel. You running out to the
sting site will burn it to the ground. Johnny Sin gets wind of it and he’ll disappear. We won’t have any clue where to look for him.”

  Wicks’ expression shifted as he realized what I said made a lot of sense. “All right, you talk like you have a plan. What is it?”

  “I’ll go and talk to Jumbo. Johnny Sin works for him. I’ll set up this gun deal. I’ll make sure Johnny is at the deal. We take the guns down and get Johnny Sin at the same time.”

  “Oh, so that way you get to protect your precious sting program.”

  “Don’t talk like that. You know better.”

  “How long?”

  “I won’t know until I talk to Jumbo, but if you go off half-cocked, it’s going to screw up everything.”

  “What am I supposed to do in the meantime, sit on my thumbs?”

  “If you want to keep busy, you can chase down La Vonn Lofton, take some of your pent-up aggression out on that case while I get this other thing set up.”

  He thought about it for a second. “Okay, I’ll give you twenty-four hours. But the last lead on Lofton is at the sting, remember? The Body Shop guy said word on the street was that Lofton was doing deals there. That’s all we got.”

  “Give me your cell phone.”

  He handed it over. I dialed RD at TransWorld.

  Rodney Davis picked up.

  “It’s Karl,” I said. “Talk to me.”

  “We got the truck. I went out there myself and stood by while it was processed. The interior was wiped clean. I had them tow it back to their shop to check the entire exterior in case this guy didn’t glove-up until he got in. I know it’s a long shot. I’m also backtracking where the truck was stolen in case someone saw something when the guy took it. I got LAPD all over that. They really want a piece of this investigation. If they get anything, I’ll call you direct. Are you carrying your cell? Probably not.”

  I ignored his last comment. “Okay, write this down, it’s something different. Do you remember a deal at the counter of TW with a guy named La Vonn Lofton?”

  “Why? Does this Lofton have something to do with what happened to Black Bart? Shouldn’t we be—”

  “No, stay focused here. Yes or no on Lofton?”

  “No, doesn’t ring any bells. Hold on, let me get my criminal index.” Background noise came over the phone as he moved to the long table he used for a desk and where he kept the three-ring binders listing all the TW customers.

  “Nope, not here.”

  “What about William Butterworth?”

  “Nope. I know I’d recognize that name. This guy could be one of the John Does that we haven’t been able to identify, thirty-six at last count. What’s with this guy Lofton or Butterworth? Why aren’t you working on Johnny Sin? He’s our main focus.”

  I ignored the question. “Do a full workup on the Lofton and Butterworth names, then call back on this phone and give all the information to Lieutenant Wicks. You got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it. I guess it’s better than doing nothing. Where are you going to be?”

  “I’m going over to Harry—” I’d almost made a huge mistake and said the name of the auto parts store in Norwalk in front of Wicks. “I’m going to meet Jumbo.”

  “You’re taking someone with you, right? A cover team? You’re not going alone, Karl.”

  I turned to look at Wicks. “No, you’re right. I’m taking someone to cover. Get back to us as soon as you can.”

  “I’m on it.”

  I closed Wicks’ flip phone and handed it to him. “I’m going to meet Jumbo to set the gun deal. You want to stand by as cover?”

  “Hell yes.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  I DROVE THE circuit around Harry and Sons Oil to Nuts three times, scoping it out. Wicks sat in his car next to a gas station market five blocks away, chain-smoking his little brown cigarettes. If he didn’t see my car drive out of the mixed-use light industrial area in twenty minutes, he was to roll in. He’d come to the counter, flash his badge, and ask a mundane question unrelated to Jumbo, Johnny Sin, or the guns.

  With the sun low on the horizon headed for dusk, I didn’t clock anything out of the ordinary in the area, and parked the Opel in the slot right in front of the store’s double doors. No other cars in the parking lot meant they didn’t get a lot of legitimate business. Old posters advertising car parts and supplies from several manufacturers plastered the windows, making it impossible to see inside. I got out and spotted three cameras under the eaves that covered the entire parking lot and the street approach.

  Inside was similar to the false front at TransWorld: four aisles filled with cheap car accessories, oil, tools from China, air fresheners, floor carpets, and the like. Dust covered everything. The place smelled of burnt marijuana and body odor.

  Jumbo stood at the counter, smiling. He had a long face that made his ears look bigger. He had age lines in his cheeks and at the corner of his mouth from smiling too often, a million false smiles meant to fool his opposition. “Good to see you, Karl. I didn’t think we’d ever get this thing done.” He waved his arm. “Welcome to my humble establishment. Come on around back. I got some twenty-year-old scotch.”

  I stopped at the counter. “There’s no one else in the store, so let’s do this here.”

  Behind him a wide opening revealed part of the big warehouse room in the back where lots of eight-foot-tall shelves were filled with parts in boxes open at the top.

  He still smiled and casually let his hand drag off the counter out of view. I stuck my hand under my work shirt and tapped the counter with my other finger. “Put it back. Keep them where I can see them.”

  His smile broadened. He complied and put his hands flat. “Hey, hey, what’s with all the hostility? We’re friends, ain’t we? Friends just tryin’ to do a little business. We don’t need any kind of threats, do we?” He lifted his hands and held them wide from his body.

  I glanced up at the clock with a camera mounted in the wall next to it and then back at him. “Where’s Johnny?”

  “He and I, we don’t, ah … get along anymore.”

  “That’s not what I heard. I heard you’re just the mouth and he’s really the shot caller.”

  He lost his smile and leaned forward, putting his hands back flat on the counter. “I don’t know who you been talking to, but you got your information all wrong. Now, are we going to talk turkey or are you going to get the hell outta my store?”

  “I think I’d feel more comfortable if Johnny was out here where I can keep an eye on him. I know he’s back there watching.”

  “He’s not—”

  I yanked my .357 and rested it on the counter, the barrel pointed at his chest. If you didn’t want them to think you were a cop, you couldn’t act like one.

  He slowly raised his hands. “We don’t need to do it this way.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t know anything about what Johnny did this morning?”

  He shook his head, doing a good imitation of an ignorant fool. A cunning fool.

  “Johnny ran down my boss with a stolen truck.”

  He pretended to be surprised.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’m not buying it.”

  His smile shifted, this time to a grin, no teeth. “You don’t look like you’re all broke up over your boss going down.”

  “Maybe I’m not. But I’m worried that if you’d do that to him, what do you have in mind for me?”

  “You’re who we really wanted to work with. Your boss was—”

  Johnny Sin stepped out from the other room. He wore a security guard’s outfit, a light-blue uniform shirt with dark blue pockets and a cheap tin badge. The shoulder patches said “Olympia Security.” He wore the matching bus driver–type hat low over eyes concealed with green aviator sunglasses. I’d come to recognize him now by his cheekbones and mouth, the line of his jaw. He rested his hand on the stock of a black automatic pistol in his holster. “For the record, I had nothing to do with any kind of hit-and-run.”

&n
bsp; I fought the urge to reach across the counter, grab him by the throat, and throttle him for what he’d done to my friend. He held all the cards. I had to play it smart.

  I said, “I don’t trust either one of you fools. I’m only here because I think we’d both make a lot of money if the price is right on those guns. Now let’s get to it or I’m walking out of here.” I glanced up at the clock: six minutes left before Wicks made an entrance and ruined everything.

  Jumbo said, “How do we know you have the kind of money we’re talking about?”

  “Back to the same question as before? I got the money. If it’s not enough, I can get the rest. You saw the size of our operation. But one of us is going to have to show our hand or we’re not going to get anywhere. So I’ll show you mine. I got five hundred thousand cash, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.” I reached behind my back waistband and pulled out a wrinkled brown paper bag wrapped with two red rubber bands. I held it up. “This is a show of good faith, ten percent, fifty grand.”

  Jumbo’s grin widened. “Fifty is a long way from five hundred thousand.”

  Johnny Sin dropped his chin and eased his sunglasses down to look over the top. “Not to mention that our price is at least three times what you say you got.”

  “Then let me buy it by the piece, one-third of your load. It’ll work better that way. Then we can start to trust each other. I’ll get the rest of the money and come back.”

  Jumbo looked at Johnny. The poker tell. Confirmation Johnny was calling the shots.

  “Okay, big man,” Jumbo said, “you can have some of the M-4s for three grand a piece.”

  “Naw, too much. You’re not going to play me for a fool. Wholesale street price is two thousand and you know it.”

  “Twenty-five hundred.”

  “Two thousand.”

  “Twenty-four,” Jumbo said. “And that’s as low as I’m going to go.”

  “Nice doing business with you.” I backed up, keeping the gun down at my side. I almost made it to the door.

  Johnny whispered something, his lips barely moving. Jumbo said, “Okay, two thousand, but that’s only one mag each and you have to leave the fifty thousand here as good faith.”