The Organization

by Allan Leverone

  He moved quietly along the edge of the Royal Flush property line, approaching Victoria’s apartment from behind. He slipped into a small grove of scrub trees and leaned against one, eyeing his princess’s building for any signs of activity.

  Nothing. And why would there be? Even night owls like Victoria had long since gone to bed. He fingered the glass cutter in the pocket of his windbreaker. It was long and thin, shaped like a pencil, with a securely capped, razor-sharp blade at one end. He knew he would need it to gain access to his girl’s apartment, since undoubtedly her days of leaving bedroom windows unlocked and accessible were long gone.

  He waited five minutes, and when the time passed with no activity he waited five more, just to convince himself he could and to reinforce his determination that this time things would be different.

  Finally he broke cover, easing out of the clump of trees and moving to the side of the apartment building. A row of poorly maintained ornamental shrubs ran along the side of the building, scraggly and dying. Joel slipped through a small opening, presumably made over the years by the groundskeepers, and flattened himself against the stucco wall.

  He was now right next to Victoria’s window. His princess was just a few feet away, waiting for him, and despite his determination to take things slowly, he was shaking with anticipation and he knew there was no holding back any longer.

  He pulled the glass cutter from his pocket and flipped off the plastic sheath covering its blade. Lifted it to the window and began scribing an arc on the glass. It hissed softly in the dry desert air. He slid the cutter slowly, smoothly, across the surface, absorbed in his work.

  26

  Jack came instantly alert at the motion, sensed more than seen, in the vicinity of a clump of trees that had been planted behind and between two of the apartment buildings. He sat up in his seat and leaned forward, squinting against the darkness.

  It was a person, dressed in dark clothing, almost certainly a man. The figure moved with a stealthy sense of purpose in a direct line toward a row of sick-looking shrubs separating the sides of the two buildings.

  Jack was up and moving before the figure disappeared from view behind the shrubs. This had to be Stark. If it wasn’t, it was the unluckiest cat burglar in the history of petty crime.

  Jack slipped out of his car and eased the door mostly closed, leaving it slightly ajar to avoid the telltale clunk. He trotted across a small swale separating the parking lots, pulling Blake Standiford’s Walther P22 out of the back of his jeans as he ran.

  The little pistol held ten rounds fully loaded, which it was. The German-manufactured weapon was light and maneuverable, with a black polymer grip and a length of just over six inches. Its serial number had been filed off—not surprising considering where Jack had gotten it—but even if the serial number had still been on the gun it wouldn’t have changed anything, since there was no way it could be traced back to him.

  He reached the entrance to Victoria’s building in seconds and moved to the corner, holding the Walther loosely in his right hand. Then he crouched down on all fours to present as small a target as possible and crawled past the two-foot opening between the shrubs and the side of the building.

  Stark was standing a good thirty feet down, next to the window that presumably would open to Victoria’s bedroom. At that distance and in the darkness, unless Stark was looking directly toward the front of the building—highly unlikely, given his obsession—Jack knew the man would never see him.

  A second later he had crawled past the opening and stood. Followed the shrubs, estimating the distance as he went. When he reached a point he guessed put him directly behind Stark, Jack stopped and discovered a small opening in the tangle of arbor.

  This was where Stark had entered. It had to be.

  He eased through the gap, moving slowly, Walther pointed at the ground. Stark was there, his back turned, all his attention on the window, against which his right hand was pressed.

  Jack raised the pistol and jammed it against the base of the man’s skull. “You can live or you can die,” he growled, his voice soft and low. “It all depends on how you approach the next few seconds.”

  Stark froze and everything stopped. The night was utterly, eerily silent.

  “Good decision,” Jack said. “Now, turn around very slowly.”

  The man pivoted and as he did, Jack noticed too late the glass cutter in his raised right hand, glittering in a splash of weak light from the parking lot. Stark slashed downward, aiming at Jack’s eyes, and he jerked his head backward reflexively.

  He was a split-second too slow. The surgical steel blade bit into Jack’s skin under his eye, slicing nearly to the cheekbone in a thick splash of blood.

  He reacted instantly, pivoting his wrist and pistol-whipping the thug with the butt of the Walther, driving his arm forward as his momentum took him backward. The blow was a glancing one, clipping off the side of Stark’s skull, but it stunned the man and he staggered. Jack struck again with the weapon and this time the rapist dropped to the ground with a soft moan.

  The entire fight took just seconds and played out in near-total silence. Jack stood with one hand clamped to his bleeding cheek. He was breathing heavily, more from adrenaline than from exertion.

  He considered the prone form of Joel Stark, groaning quietly and twitching in the hard-packed dirt. It was tempting to sink a bullet in Stark’s head right here and now and put an end to Victoria Welling’s problems for good, but Jack controlled the impulse.

  He had other plans for this monster.

  The pain began to ratchet up in his face. The injury was bleeding profusely and burned like someone had inserted a lit blowtorch under the skin. Jack knew it was going to get worse before it got better. He ignored it.

  Stark moaned again and began to roll to his feet and Jack kicked him once in the chest, hard, and the man went down again in a heap.

  Jack dropped to his knees next to the dusty, dirty Stark and noted with satisfaction that the rapist was bleeding from the head where he had been struck with the Walther. The blood wasn’t flowing quite as freely as it was from Jack’s face, but he knew Stark couldn’t be feeling too chipper right now, either. Good. Serves him right.

  He picked the glass cutter off the ground where the man had dropped it.

  Waited for the rapist’s eyes to flutter open.

  Seconds later they did, and he said, “Get your sorry ass up,” his voice quiet but filled with menace.

  Stark stumbled heavily to his feet. His eyes were glazed and he shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs, then he stared at Jack with a look of pure malevolence. “Who in the fuck are you?”

  “I’m the guy who decides whether you live or die. And so far, you haven’t earned many points in your favor. Now, start walking.”

  Stark bent and brushed dust and dirt off his clothes. He seemed pretty wobbly and Jack was glad. It might keep him from getting any more dangerous ideas. On the other hand, it was obvious he was stalling, probably hoping his head would clear enough to enable him to come at Jack again.

  It was time to demonstrate the pecking order. He jammed the gun into the back of Stark’s neck. “Start walking. I’m not going to tell you again.”

  The man stumbled forward a couple of steps and then spread his hands. “Where?”

  “Away from an innocent woman’s window would be a good start.” He shoved Stark roughly forward and the two men trudged along the side of the building. A moment later they emerged from behind the shrubs next to the front door. Jack gestured to the right with the gun and they crossed the parking lot at an angle.

  Back at his car, Jack held the weapon steady on his prisoner as he reached into the back seat and grabbed two plastic zip ties. Blood streamed down his face and his cheek throbbed, daggers of pain racing through his head with every beat of his heart.

  “On your knees,” he said quietly. “Hurry up.” Despite the hour and the shadows enveloping his car, there was no time to waste. He didn’t think anyo
ne would see much if they happened to peek out an apartment window, but if some early riser walked out the front door of the building behind them on his way to work, there would be no way to mask what was happening here.

  Stark dropped to his knees on the pavement, moving with obvious reluctance and no faster now than he had been before. Jack supposed he couldn’t blame him. From Stark’s perspective there was no upside in hurrying things along.

  But Stark’s perspective wasn’t the one he cared about, and he bent and zipped the plastic ties quickly around Stark’s wrists after forcing the man’s hands behind his back. Then he pulled the rapist roughly to his feet and shoved him into the vehicle.

  It took maybe two seconds to hurry around to the other side, and then Jack climbed into the car, fired it up, and began rolling toward the exit. Stark had remained utterly silent since their terse exchange at the side of Victoria’s building, but now he said, “You’re obviously no cop. What the hell’s going on here?”

  Jack ignored the question. Instead he asked, “Where’d you park you car?”

  “Why would I tell you anything?”

  “Because I have a gun and you don’t.” Jack had been weaving the vehicle slowly through the Royal Flush’s serpentine access roads, and now he eased to a stop and turned to face Joel Stark. He lifted Blake Standiford’s Walther and pressed the barrel lightly against Stark’s forehead. “I suggest you remember that.”

  Stark squeezed his eyes shut, as if afraid this lunatic sitting on the other side of the car might just blow his brains out right here and now. A second passed, and then two, and then he reopened his eyes in seeming surprise at the realization he wasn’t dead yet.

  Jack lowered the gun and turned his attention back to the access road. He hoped the blood leaking out of each of them was being trapped by the clear plastic tarp he had placed over the bench seats before leaving the Tumbling Dice motel, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  The interior was quiet, the only sound the low hum of the Chevy’s engine. Jack glanced at his captive and saw an oily grin slide across Stark’s pockmarked face.

  “Ahhh. . . . I know what’s going on here,” his captive said, amusement obvious in his voice. “You must be the little slut’s boyfriend.”

  “She’s no slut. She’s just a normal young woman, or at least she was until you raped her and terrorized her and sent her running in fear across the country. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  It was as if Jack hadn’t spoken. Stark’s taunting smile never faltered, and he mockingly said, “Guess I owe you an apology, lover boy. Now that she’s had me, you can’t satisfy her, can you? You’re not enough for her, am I right?”

  Cat-quick, Jack leaned right and slammed the barrel of the Walther into Stark’s throat, and the man began coughing and gagging as the side of his head bounced off the passenger window.

  “Let’s get something straight right now,” Jack hissed. “You’re nothing more to me than a cockroach, one who deserves to be stomped underfoot. If you weren’t such a limp-dick pervert, you wouldn’t have to break into women’s apartments just to get one to pay attention to you. One more word about Victoria and I’m going to shoot your dick off, do you understand? Nod if you understand, pervert.”

  Rage and humiliation smoldered in Stark’s eyes, but after a moment he nodded slowly, still coughing and wheezing and struggling to breathe.

  “Now,” Jack continued. “Last chance. Tell me where your car’s parked or I kill you right here and bury your worthless carcass in the desert. Your choice. It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference to me either way.”

  Stark’s eyes searched Jack’s face. Apparently decided he was serious. “Take a right at the exit. I’m a little ways down on the left, in a dry cleaner’s parking lot.”

  Jack reached into the back seat, picked up a towel and pressed it to his face. Keeping firm pressure against the gash, he put the car back in gear and accelerated toward the exit. Turned right as instructed and pulled onto the deserted road.

  Stark cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know why I bothered to answer your question. You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’re not going to kill me?”

  “I didn’t say that, either.” Ahead and to the left, a small, beaten-down strip mall loomed, the storefronts appearing to be split between businesses struggling to survive and those that had already succumbed to the pressures of a down economy, even in a town like Vegas.

  Jack turned to Stark, who had slumped uncomfortably back in his seat, his body pressing his cuffed hands against the seat back. He gestured with his head out the window. “This it?”

  “Yeah, this is it.” All fight seemed to have gone out of the man, but that might be nothing more than a conscious effort on his part to get Jack to let his guard down. That wasn’t going to happen.

  Jack doused his headlights and drove into the lot. An ancient Monte Carlo of indeterminate color was parked in front of a tired-looking dry cleaning establishment. The car was pocked with rust and dented in dozens of places. Jack pulled to a stop next to it.

  Stark’s nervousness seemed to have spiked again now that they had entered the lot. The uneasy status quo was about to change and he knew it. “What happens now?”

  “Get out,” Jack said, as he lifted a skinny paper bag and a small first aid kit out of the back seat.

  “Then what?” For the first time, Stark’s voice wavered.

  “Then we change cars. We’re taking yours the rest of the way.”

  “The rest of the way where?”

  “Shut up and move.”

  27

  “Where are you staying?” Jack asked the question without taking his eyes from the road. He was surprised to discover that despite the Monte Carlo’s decrepit appearance it actually felt solid and drove reasonably well.

  Stark looked into Jack’s eyes with a mixture of contempt and acceptance. “You’re bleeding all over my car.”

  Jack had dropped the towel into his lap while he drove, and now he pressed it back to his face. He did his best to ignore the pain, which was throbbing with the bright intensity of a fresh knife wound. “There,” he said. “Is that better? I’d hate to damage the interior of such a beautiful machine.”

  Stark said nothing and when it became clear he had no intention of continuing the conversation, Jack leaned over and pressed Standiford’s Walther to Stark’s forehead as he had done before.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked again, speaking slowly and quietly. “You know the drill. Tell me now or die.”

  “Cactus Motel.” Stark spit the words out like razor blades after a moment’s hesitation.

  Jack said, “Okay. I’m going to slice the zip ties off your wrists, and you’re going to reach into your pocket and hand me your car keys. If anything besides a set of keys comes out of that pocket, I’m going to shoot you in the face. If you move a muscle in any way I don’t like, I’m going to shoot you in the face. If you look at me cross-eyed, I’m going to shoot you in the face. Understand where I’m going with this?”

  Stark narrowed his eyes and Jack thought he was going to say something, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded. Jack pulled a small pocketknife out of his pocket with his left hand while holding the gun steadily on Stark with his right. Then he gestured with his head and Stark leaned to the side. A moment later his hands were free.

  “Get the key,” Jack said, replacing the knife in his pocket.

  Stark slid one filthy hand into the right pocket of his jeans. Pulled out a single key and handed it to Jack.

  A moment later the car was running and Jack said, “Very good. Guide me to the Cactus Motel and don’t do anything stupid. I assume even someone of your limited intellectual capacity hasn’t forgotten already what will happen if you do something stupid.”

  Hatred smoldered in Stark’s eyes but he did as he was told, and less than five minutes later they had arrived at a rundown establish
ment whose better days, if they had ever existed at all, were long gone. Jack was unsurprised to discover Victoria’s stalker was staying so close to her home. She was, after all, the reason the man had driven nearly three thousand miles across the country.

  The motel featured an office with a flickering neon sign in the window that read, TEL, the “M” and the “O” having burnt out, probably years ago. More significant than the sign, though, was the fact that the motel office was dark, meaning the desk clerk was probably sacked out in the back somewhere. If that was the case, the likelihood of him suddenly getting up from his slumber and peering into the parking lot was slim.

  There was no way of knowing how many of the other Cactus Motel rooms were in use at the moment, but the lot was sparsely populated with cars. Hopefully any guests who were here and who were still up at this hour would be too drunk or drugged-up to notice—or care—that another guest was being held captive by a man bleeding from his face into a towel.

  Jack followed Stark’s instructions, easing the Monte Carlo to a stop in front of a room located almost as far from the office as was possible. He killed the engine and pocketed the keys and said, “You know how we play this game. Don’t yell or do anything else to draw attention to yourself. If you do I’ll kill you. And don’t think for a second I’d hesitate to put a bullet in your back if you try to run. Tell me you understand.”

  Stark’s gaze bored in on Jack. His hatred was palpable. After a second he said grudgingly, “I understand.”

  “Then let’s go. Walk straight to your door, unlock it and step inside. I’ll be right behind you, so don’t bother trying to jump in and slam the door before I can follow.”

  Jack dropped the bloody towel on the floor and picked up the paper bag he had brought with him. Then he opened his door and stepped out of the car quickly, slipping the gun into his pocket as he did. It was highly unlikely anyone was looking out a window, but why take chances? On the other side of the Pontiac, Stark climbed out as well, scanning the parking lot. Jack could sense him looking for something, anything, he could use to turn the tables on his attacker.