Due Recompense: Justice In Its Rawest Form

by Jason Trevor

  “I don’t figure you’ll roll on selling me hardware. Fifth amendment and all that,”

  “I don’t have anything else to give them. You’re just a customer of my temp business and an old military buddy. Hand to God, I don’t know what you’ve been doing lately,”

  “I know that. You don’t have anything to give them, but the lead detective on the case is a guy in a polyester suit, named Sims. This isn’t his first rodeo, and he’s a dog with a bone. He’ll try pretty hard to get into your head,”

  “You want me to send him down a dead-end alley?”

  “Nah, that would come back on you. Just give him the mushroom treatment,”

  “Roger that. Keep him in the dark and feed him shit,”

  “You got it. I’m going to pop smoke and jet. He could turn up in your face at any minute and I don’t want to be around when he does,”

  “I’ve got a Chamber of Commerce luncheon with two city councilmen, a few state senators, one of the governor’s department secretaries, and a few other muckety-mucks tomorrow. He’d better not interrupt that,”

  “I don’t know. He may try it as a tactic to mess with you, but I doubt he wants to piss off city hall or the governor’s office. Just be ready for him. I’m gone,”

  “Keep your head down and your rifle clean, bro.”

  Joe slinked around the table and out the door.

  ◆◆◆

  The rattling of the old front door of her house as someone knocked on it startled Elaine. She was at the roll-top desk in the den, which had been the unofficial "office" for her and Foster for decades. She stood up from the probate documents she was working on and strode to the door.

  "Who is it?" she asked through the door.

  "Cody Sims, Mrs. Shayne. Can we talk for a few minutes?" She opened the door and ushered him in.

  "Are you here with a development on Foster's case?" she asked, leading Cody to a tiny table in the kitchen's equally tiny dining nook.

  "Sort of. Have you talked to Joe Danton in the past few weeks?"

  "Joe? I haven't talked to him since the morning after Foster's death when you were here. What does he have to do with it?"

  "I'm pretty sure he’s solved the case already,"

  "That's great! Did he show you what he's found, so you can go arrest the guy?"

  "It's not that simple. He's not a cop or any type of licensed detective. He broke a lot of rules, and is acting on his findings all by himself,"

  Ellie took a minute to digest what she had just been told, then tilted her head inquisitively. "So, you think he's the one behind the gang war on the news? He's the one shooting and blowing up all those thugs?"

  "I'm one-hundred percent sure that he is, yes. And he has to be stopped. Right now, he's one of the most prolific serial killers in this city's history,” Cody paused for effect. It was only a minor exaggeration. “If you are as close with him as you said, I need your help before something terrible happens to him, or an innocent bystander,"

  She drummed her fingers on the table a few times and looked hard at a wedding picture of herself and Foster on the wall.

  "With all due respect, Detective," she sighed, "you have to know what side of that controversy I come down on, whether it's related to Foster's death or not. I understand the danger of vigilantism, but whoever this is, Joe or anyone, they are doing more to clean up the streets around here than the police have done since I moved into this house when Foster and I got married. If you're right and it is Joe, I don't know anything that would help you, and I wouldn't help you catch him if I did. I would prefer that you spend your time catching the person who killed the father of my children, not trying to lock up the person who beat you to them,"

  "He's dangerous, Mrs. Shayne-"

  "Good. That means he is dangerous to someone who would kill an innocent man for a truck. If they are that cavalier about taking a life, maybe they need the fear of God put into them. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to check on the status of an order in the factory back there. My husband is dead and that responsibility lands on me now, so please don’t expect me to feel sympathy toward his killer when they are lying in the bed they made," she stood up and gestured toward the door.

  Cody stood up and stared blankly for a few seconds, then strode to the door, silently shaking his head to himself. After she watched him get into his car and drive away, she went back into the kitchen, crossed to the hall door in the back, opened it, and drifted toward the table again. Joe entered from the hallway and followed her.

  “Well, you guessed right when you came to tell me that he might show up. Your timing could have been better, though,” she looked at Joe harshly. As she stared, Joe mashed the corner of the curling linoleum down into its place with the toe of his boot as he pushed his glasses up his nose, turned from the wall to face her, held his hand up as if to say something, then resignedly dropped it down to slap the side of his jeans’ leg.

  “You don’t need to know a thing that I am doing. Just know that I am righteous. I believe that with all of my being,”

  Elaine grabbed a remote and clicked on the little TV on the kitchen counter. “You are in every minute of the 24-hour news cycle. Look at this…” she nodded to the television. A cable news channel came on, with the screen split into three equal boxes. The show’s host occupied the middle box, while guest commenters occupied the two outer boxes, beamed into the news studio via satellite from their respective hometowns.

  “This guy is a menace to society, a racist, and a dangerous sociopath! I can’t believe that ANYONE would support what he is doing to this impoverished community-” argued the one on the left, with his name and credentials from the Southern Poverty Law Center superimposed at the bottom of the box.

  “Racist? When did race come into the picture? For all we know the guy is black!” countered the one on the right, a middle-aged woman with bona-fides from the CATO institute by her name.

  “How many of his victims weren’t black and from the same predominantly black low-income neighborhood?” he asked rhetorically. She answered him before he could go on.

  “How many of his victims weren’t in a violent street gang? Things in that neighborhood probably wouldn’t have gotten so bad if the police could effectively do their jobs without being constantly undercut by groups like the SPLC and ACLU-“

  She was cut off as Joe poked the power button on the front of the TV. “I know about that. I’m a nationwide celebrity and no one even knows my name. It’s kind of an interesting position to be in,”

  “It’s a dangerous position,”

  “It’s more dangerous to the animals who thought that Foster’s truck was worth more than his life. These thugs may be badasses in their little sandbox here in the comfy, cozy, safe, protected bosom of the U.S.A. I have fought alongside, and sometimes against, men, women, and children who had nothing to lose but the dirt under their feet and were willing to die for it. The brutality and inhumanity of open combat brings the sickening worst of humanity out into the sunshine. There’s nothing that these guys can do that I haven’t seen before,”

  “Bonnie and Clyde were folk legends because they robbed the banks that people hated. The public thought they were righteous, just like people think you are. The police fired hundreds of bullets into their car and dragged their bodies through town. The police are going to get pretty determined to stop you,”

  “I don’t think that HPD issues tommy-guns,”

  “You know what I mean, Joe,” She was cut off by the ring of Joe’s phone. He snatched it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and answered.

  “Hey there, Randall! Thanks for coming through on that order a few weeks ago! What can I do for you?”

  “Why the hell is there a police detective standing at my secretary’s desk, demanding to talk to me about you?”

  “He thinks I did something, and he’s bothering everyone who knows me about it. Talk to him or don’t. I don’t care, but give him a message from me. If he continues to pester my vend
ors and my customers, he will be hearing from my lawyer about police harassment. Can you tell him that for me?”

  “Will do,”

  Chapter 24

  He had been planning to use his little wad of thermite on the ugly Impala. Now that car was in the police impound waiting for forensic processing, and wouldn’t be seeing the streets any time soon. Maybe the Caprice would see some street time. Maybe not. William had told him that the three gangsters-turned-snitches that he hadn’t managed to shoot had made a run for it, and were now being actively sought by the HPD. Hunting them would invariably cross his path with the police. Things were getting dicey and difficult. He needed some new wheels.

  ◆◆◆

  The conference room on the homicide deck of the 1200 Travis building was already inordinately small, for a conference room. Now it was positively stuffed. A laptop and projector were set up at the end of the table, where Cody and Johnny stood, surveying the overcrowded room.

  “There’s no room to think at all, and we don’t even have everyone here yet,” Sims muttered to Le.

  “Yeah, this isn’t going to work,” Every chair at the table was occupied, and most of the spaces between the chairs were consumed by one or two people standing. All three walls that didn’t hold a projector screen were lined with people, as were the small spaces of the wall on either side of the screen. More people were trying to squeeze their way in through the door and discovering that there was no place to go. A logjam of uniforms and cheap suits was forming right inside the door as people filed in and then stopped, realizing there was no place to go.

  “To hell with this!” Cody raised his voice over the mumbling din of people. “I’m happy to have so many volunteers, but this conference room isn’t going to work,” he looked down at a uniform sitting in one of the chairs. “Is your shift over?”

  “Yes, sir,”

  “Relief shift has already rolled?”

  “On the beat twenty minutes ago,”

  “Where’s your squad room?”

  “Three,”

  Detective Sims looked back up at the crowd and raised his voice again. “Reconvene in thirty in the squad room on three! No room to breathe in here. Everybody out! Meet up again in the squad room on three in thirty minutes!” As people filed out, he ripped a blank sheet out of the legal pad mixed in with his paperwork and made a sign for the door. He wrote on it in sharpie: VIGILANTE TASK FORCE VOLUNTEER MEETING DELAYED 30 MINS AND MOVED TO 3RD FLOOR SQUAD ROOM.

  ◆◆◆

  “Hey, where’s that ugly old Super Beetle I gave you?” Joe asked Greenie as they sipped coffee at Shaker’s again.

  “Behind the barn at the house. You want it back?”

  “Yes, actually. Did you ever sticker it?”

  “Hell, no. It’s not good for much besides a boat anchor,”

  “Drive me out there. I need it,”

  “Where’s that nice Suburban I sold you?” he waxed sarcastic, “As long as there isn’t a turret protruding from the roof, it should blend right in with the traffic,”

  “One of Houston’s finest chased me from the police station through downtown and Sixth Ward the other night before I could lose him. That truck will never see the light of day again,”

  “What? No way! Not to give out any undeserved due, but I think that truck was about the only car in the world that your Super Beetle could outrun. How did you manage to lose a police cruiser with it?”

  “It wasn’t a cruiser, it was a POV. Tahoe, but I think it was a Defender package. I lost it using a supercharged LS 427,”

  “Whoa,”

  “And nitrous…”

  “Jesus!”

  “Fat lot of good. I had a Honduran kid who used to work in a chop shop cut it up for me the other night. It’s gone forever now. If you think you can fence the parts I saved, that would be cool. That Jasper LS cost me twenty grand all by itself. Less than two hundred miles on it. Get me fifteen and you can keep five of it. Same thing for the Monster transmission, the Rickson wheels, and the Dunlop run-flats,”

  “Damn, decked that rig out! What about the elephant in the room?”

  “You mean the elephant on the roof?”

  “Yeah, that elephant. The angry one that spits lead and fire out of its trunk, and sounds like a chainsaw when it trumpets,”

  “Hang on to it for at least a year or two, then move it for me,”

  “That thing will be hard to move and it’s a dog-whistle for the ATF if word about it spreads too far. My cut will be a lot more than twenty-five or thirty percent,”

  “I don’t care. I need air between it and me. As much as possible. Pick it all up any time you are ready, as long as you are discreet,”

  “Where? That big industrial park in The Woodlands that you bought last year?”

  “No, the warehouse on the Beltway,”

  “Fine, let’s go. It’s a forty-minute drive to the homestead, then you can get your turd-bug,”

  “I need a wig, too,”

  “Can’t help you there. No such thing as a tactical wig,”

  ◆◆◆

  Every chair in the squad room filled quickly. As did the back wall. The side walls were just starting to get crowded when people finally stopped trickling in.

  Cody had spent the last twenty minutes fiddling to get his laptop connected to the squad room projector and now stood at the podium in the front of the room with a presenting remote in his hand. He tossed the remote to Johnny, then turned to the crowd in the room.

  “All right, let’s get this started!” he announced. The dull mumbling stopped almost immediately. “As you all know, participation in this task force is one-hundred percent voluntary. This is a dangerous and high-profile case, so if we are successful in our mandate, there will probably be a commendation for everyone who participates. Our suspect is unassuming, slick, smooth-talking, and capable of great violence toward his targets, which so far have been strictly limited to members of the Blood Brothers gang out of Third Ward. The Blood brothers have been all but neutralized by him, and the remaining ones are in the wind, including one who was on a provisional release from county lockup, contingent on helping to catch the suspect. The most important thing of all for you to remember is that the public’s and the media’s eyes will be locked on us the whole time. This case has dominated the national news for weeks, and everything you do will be scrutinized, all the way down to wiping your ass. Public opinion is strongly on the side of our suspect. Any misstep on our part will create even more public sympathy for him. Any questions before I start getting into the weeds with details?”

  Eager silence from the room.

  “Good. Lights, please?” Someone by the door turned them off. “The first slide please, Johnny.” A larger-than-life image of Joe’s driver’s license photo flashed onto the screen. “Meet Joe Danton. Mike Brady by day, John Wesley Hardin by night. He’s about as boring of a suburbanite you will ever find. He runs an industrial technology business, drives an Escalade, and drinks lots of coffee. He’s downright affable, mostly passive, and mainly boring. But, dig deeper and this dude is a hardened combat veteran. Everyone here knows how tough the Blood Brothers are, but he doesn’t seem to. One night he nonchalantly strolled up to a street corner where five of them were hanging around and single-handedly beat the ever-loving crap out of all of them. Then he shot them all in the legs, just for good measure. If it comes to a physical confrontation, there is no outcome where one person takes him down by themselves. They will end up leaving the fight in a pile. Is everyone clear on that? Absolutely NO one-on-one confrontation with this guy. Next slide please, Johnny,”

  The photo transitioned to mug shots of Kanya, Needle, and Bullet.

  “These are the only Blood Brothers left vertical. Everyone else in the gang is either in the ICU or on a slab. Our thinking is that he plans to tie a toe-tag on each of these three as soon as he can. As I said, they are in the wind. We have to find them before he does,” A tired-looking woman in a uniform with sergeant’s str
ipes perked up and raised her hand.

  “That bitch right there spat in my face three times while I was subduing and arresting her outside of a night club in Eado a couple of months ago. What the hell is she doing loose?” she pointed angrily at the mug shot of Kanya. “Those other two were there, but the only ones we arrested were her and her man. Where’s he? Is he in the wind, too?”

  “He was blown to pieces by a water heater that was converted into an IED by Danton. Her sentence was almost up, so she was offered immunity in exchange for helping us catch Danton. She and three others gave their protection detail the slip, and as soon as they turned up on the street, Danton showed up with guns blazing. We think he only killed one of them that night because a badge was near the others and he doesn’t want collateral damage. Now, let’s take a few steps back and I’ll give you the whole history of this case, and the game plan for moving forward,”

  ◆◆◆

  During their late-night walk to the hotel, Oscar had told Joe about a house that two of the Blood Brothers rented off-book, so there was no official record to connect them to it. The house was on a corner and they had parked a car they boosted outside, planning to bring it to Jefe and Oscar, but it had been booted for the owner’s numerous unpaid parking tickets. Thus, Oscar knew the exact location of the house on account of having to go pick the car up instead of the Blood Brothers delivering it. It was at the corner of Tuam and Scott Streets, with a low, rickety cyclone fence around the yard that was overgrown with weeds.

  Joe sat, stuffed into the backseat of his crappy VW, wearing a long blonde wig he had picked up from a very creepy place in Montrose, parked on Napolean Street just south of Tuam. It gave him an excellent view to stake out the house, but he’d had to park further back from Tuam than he liked, due to the presence of an inconveniently-placed fire hydrant, the blocking of which would likely draw unwanted police attention. He lay perfectly still as he watched the house, only making subtle movements to sip on a Capri Sun and nibble on an MRE that he had packed for his stakeout. He was confident that the last three Blood Brothers still breathing free air would eventually turn up there. The question was, did Detectives Sims or Le know about the house?