The Organization

by Allan Leverone

  But there was nothing.

  The other cars in the motel lot were dark and silent, as were the dirty windows of the rooms they were parked outside. The flickering lamps hanging off ancient light poles did nothing to reassure guests of their nighttime safety, but they provided more light than Jack would need to pick off Stark should he try to run.

  Jack waited patiently at the front of the car—he decided the color was probably purple, although even now he wouldn’t have put money on it—while Joel Stark trudged toward his motel room, still in no hurry. He made it halfway and then stopped.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jack said. “Move it.”

  “No. The minute we go inside that room, you’re going to kill me. Why the hell would I do that?”

  Jack leaned forward, holding Stark’s cold gaze. When he spoke, he spoke quietly. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be lying in a pool of your own blood back at the Royal Flush Apartments. I didn’t go to all the trouble and risk of bringing you here just to shoot you now.”

  Stark shook his head, his anger and frustration now joined by confusion. “Then what the hell are we doing here?”

  Jack gripped the bottom of the paper bag with his gun hand, and with the other lifted a bottle of cheap whiskey by the neck, slipping it far enough out of the bag to display to Joel Stark.

  Then he smiled. “We’re gonna have a little party.”

  28

  The inside of Stark’s motel room was about what Jack had expected. Threadbare carpeting that looked as though it hadn’t been vacuumed since the 1970’s covering an uneven floor, with an unmade double bed taking up most of the room’s interior. An ancient television set wobbled atop a scarred wooden writing desk. An iron pipe ran from ceiling to floor behind a freestanding lamp in one corner that provided barely enough light to dispel the darkness.

  Stark moved a few feet inside the room and then stopped, back to Jack, shoulders drawn inward like he half-expected to take a bullet in the back. Jack let him think it.

  He closed the door quietly and locked it. Eased over to the corner and stepped behind the floor lamp, Walther trained on Stark. Placed a hand on the pipe and yanked with all his strength.

  The pipe didn’t budge.

  It was perfect. Jack only needed it to hold for a few minutes and it was clearly heavy enough and strong enough for that.

  “Come here,” he said to Stark, who turned around slowly. Reluctantly. He had been thrown for a loop by the sudden appearance of the bag with the whiskey in it. Jack was glad. A confused prisoner, off-guard and on edge, was a hell of a lot easier to control than a confident one.

  Stark shuffled across the room and as he walked, Jack plucked another zip tie out of his pocket. He maintained a steady grip on the gun and kept it trained center mass on the prisoner as he approached. No man, no matter how quick, would be able to inflict any serious damage on Jack before he could squeeze off a gut shot, and at this point, confused and hurting from two blows to the head earlier, Joel Stark would hardly qualify as “quick.”

  Blood dripped in a steady patter onto the floor from Jack’s facial wound. There would be no way to escape Vegas now without leaving behind his DNA and he hoped that wouldn’t eventually turn into a problem. Stark was bleeding also, but if the rest of the night went the way Jack expected it to, the authorities would certainly follow up on where all the blood had come from.

  It would not take them long to discover more than one person had been here tonight. The same was likely true of Stark’s car.

  One thing Jack had going for him was the fact that nowhere in the system was there any record of Jack Sheridan’s DNA, nor of his fingerprints, nor of any other conventional form of identification. Those items had been wiped clean, eliminated from all U.S. Government databases the day he completed his military training for the unit so secret it didn’t have a name.

  In any event, now was not the time to worry about the DNA issue. Jack had more immediate concerns.

  Stark approached slowly and Jack held up a hand. “That’s far enough.” He kept his voice cold and hard. “Hands around the pipe.”

  When Stark complied, Jack whipped the ties around his wrists, effectively handcuffing the man to the sturdy piece of iron.

  “Don’t move,” he said—hopefully unnecessarily—and walked into the tiny bathroom. Among the detritus scattered over the worn laminate countertop was what he was looking for: a clear plastic drinking cup. He retrieved the cup and returned to the living area.

  Picked up the whiskey bottle and poured until the cup was three-quarters full.

  “Let’s get this party started,” he said, placing the cup in his prisoner’s hands.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Jack lifted the Walther and displayed it to his prisoner, just in case he had forgotten where he fit in the hierarchy. “Drink,” he said quietly.

  Stark’s confusion was evident as he brought the cup to his lips with shaking hands.

  “That thing had better be empty when I come back,” Jack said, turning and retracing his steps to the bathroom.

  He squinted in the dirty light as he examined his injured cheek in the vanity mirror. The damage Stark had inflicted with his glass cutter looked relatively minor, although the wound was deep and had bled profusely. He had been slashed just below his eye, where there was nothing but skin and bone. Any cut in that location was bound to look worse than it really was.

  The injury probably would require sutures, but that wasn’t going to happen, at least not here in Vegas. He would patch himself up the best he could now and then revisit the situation back in New Hampshire when this job was finished.

  Jack cleaned the area as thoroughly as he could, given the relative lack of supplies. He ignored the burning and throbbing in his cheek and accepted the fact that he would be dealing with discomfort for the remainder of the assignment.

  All the more reason to get it over with and get the hell out of Dodge.

  He patted his face dry with what looked like a relatively clean towel and although the gash continued to bleed, the flow had slowed to a sluggish ooze. He opened his first aid kit and removed a clean gauze pad and some tape. Secured the bandage. Decided he would live another day.

  All of this was taking time Jack had not budgeted when planning the operation. If he was going to have any chance of accomplishing what he wanted to tonight, he needed to get moving. He left the bathroom and returned to Stark, who had apparently taken Jack’s admonition to drink his whiskey to heart. The plastic cup was empty and since there was no place Stark could have dumped it without the evidence being plain to Jack, he had to have drunk it.

  The rapist was now well on his way to becoming intoxicated. His face was flushed and slack and he sagged against the iron pipe like an alcoholic at closing time. It wasn’t surprising, Jack thought, given the amount of liquor the cup had contained and the speed with which Stark had finished it. He would only become more impaired as the alcohol was absorbed into his system.

  Jack refilled the cup to half its previous level and handed it once again to Stark. “Still thirsty?”

  The prisoner tried to fix Jack with a glare, but he wasn’t able to manage it. His eyes slid off Jack’s face as he wobbled slightly. He accepted the cup and drank awkwardly, lowering his face next to the pipe and straining with his zip-tied hands to bring the whiskey to his lips.

  While he was drinking, Jack gathered his things together—including the towel he had used on his injury and the bag containing the whiskey—and slipped on a pair of surgical gloves. He wiped down everything he had touched in the bathroom and then returned to Stark. He sliced through the zip ties and placed them carefully in his pocket.

  “Time to go,” he said, smiling tightly.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Stark said. Jack thought he did a reasonable job of not slurring his words, considering how much liquor he had just consumed in a very short time.

  “What’s going on is that this party is ove
r. It’s time to hit the road and pay someone a visit.”

  “Pay someone a visit? Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  29

  Blake was still seething an hour after arriving home. His plan had been to fall into bed immediately—tomorrow would be a big day, maybe the biggest of his life, and he needed to be on top of his game if he expected to survive—but that plan hadn’t taken into account being pushed around and humiliated by some asshole hopped up on steroids.

  The first thing he did after parking his Mercedes in the garage was wobble into the living room, yank open the glass door to his liquor cabinet, and mix a drink. Another mistake, probably, but Blake knew there was no way he would be able to sleep until he calmed down.

  Let it go. He was a stupid punk kid and you’re gonna be leaving this city of whores and losers forever tomorrow anyway. Just let it go.

  But that was easier said than done, and one drink turned into two, and then three as he watched SportsCenter on his big-screen TV and fingered a gun, one of many he had hidden throughout his home. He fantasized about blowing Big Tony’s brains out as well as the punk bouncer’s, a two-for-one deal on his way out of town. It was a satisfying mental movie, and gradually his simmering anger melted away into a kind of self-satisfied exhaustion.

  He glanced at the clock hanging over his TV, a diamond-encrusted, ostentatious monstrosity that had been given to him by a guy whose wife he had killed a few years ago as a favor. The fucking thing looked as though it belonged in Liberace’s house, it was that goddamned ugly, but the guy’s heart had been in the right place and so Blake had stuck it on the wall despite its unattractiveness. The gift had meant something to him.

  Right now, though, what it meant was that the time had disappeared, evaporating like dew on a desert morning. Blake’s eyes widened as he stared at the clock and through his drunken fog tried to decipher the meaning of the hands on its ugly face.

  It was three a.m.

  It couldn’t possibly be three a.m.

  He blinked. Looked again. It remained three a.m.

  Holy shit. It’s three a.m.

  He struggled to his feet, weaving and bobbing like Muhammad Ali rope-a-doping Joe Frazier, and staggered upstairs to his bedroom, where he fell fully clothed into bed, his weapon still in his hand.

  He was asleep within seconds.

  30

  By the time they arrived in Blake Standiford’s North Las Vegas neighborhood it was nearly four-thirty a.m., later than Jack had planned for and not long before the area’s early risers would start getting out of their houses and on the road to begin their workdays. There was no time to spare.

  Stark was by now blind drunk, which was exactly the way Jack wanted him. The rapist had gotten past his initial confusion and skepticism about why his captor would go to the trouble of ambushing him only to ply him with alcohol, embracing the idea wholeheartedly the more he drank, swigging whiskey from his plastic cup during the ride across town.

  Jack pulled to the curb directly outside Standiford’s home. It would be impossible to travel any distance on foot with the inebriated Stark in tow, so this would have to do. Hopefully no insomniac would glance out his living room window as the two men were climbing out of the car and making their way to the rear of Standiford’s home, but the risk couldn’t be helped. At least it was Stark’s own car and could not be traced to Jack.

  Even in the worst-case scenario, if a neighbor spotted them and became suspicious enough to alert the police, Jack expected to be long gone by the time any squad cars showed up to investigate. He would only have a few minutes but that’s all this should take.

  He killed the engine and opened his door, having disabled the Monte Carlo’s interior lighting before leaving the Cactus Motel. Stark’s slack form slumped against his seatback, eyes half-closed as he softly hummed a tune Jack didn’t recognize. His hands remained wrapped securely around the plastic cup, inside which a small amount of whiskey sloshed.

  Jack crossed behind the parked vehicle and then opened the passenger door. “Time to go,” he said softly.

  Stark blinked and looked up, his eyes focusing on Jack with difficulty. “Go where?” he said, his speech slurred.

  “You know the party we started back at your motel?”

  Stark nodded.

  “We’re finishing it here.” He hauled Stark out of the car by the arm, shoving the man against the doorframe after he wobbled to his feet. “In case you’ve forgotten,” he said softly, “my gun is right here.” He lifted Standiford’s Walther and made sure Stark got a good look in the murky half-light. “Don’t make a sound and don’t try anything stupid or I’ll drop you where you stand. Are you with me on this, Joel?”

  Stark weaved and bobbed and after a moment, nodded tiredly. “I’m with you,” he said.

  “Then let’s go.” Jack eased the Monte Carlo’s door closed, leaving the vehicle unlocked. He would have to return to the car before disappearing, in order to retrieve his bloody towel and the rest of his supplies, which would then be distributed among trash receptacles across Las Vegas.

  He gripped Stark’s right arm tightly at the crook of the elbow and they began walking/stumbling along Standiford’s property line, paralleling his driveway and moving along the side of the garage. At the corner, they turned left and followed the contours of the house until reaching the back door.

  “Sit down and be quiet,” Jack commanded, his voice barely audible.

  Stark said nothing, but he folded himself up and sat on the concrete back steps, closing his eyes and cupping his chin in his hands as he propped his elbows on his knees. He looked ready to pass out and Jack hoped he hadn’t overdone it with the whiskey. All he needed was a few more minutes of consciousness from the man, then it wouldn’t make any difference.

  Satisfied he could safely divert his attention for the few seconds it would require, Jack removed his lock picking tools from his jacket pocket and bent over the lock. It was a simple design, cheaply made, providing little protection from a determined home invader who knew what he was doing.

  Jack Sheridan knew what he was doing.

  In seconds the lock was picked. Jack bent and whispered to Stark, “Stand up, Joel, I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  Stark jumped slightly, almost as if he had forgotten his surroundings and situation. “Surprise?” he said, his fuzzy eyes narrowing with suspicion.

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing to worry about. In fact, I think you’re going to like it.”

  Scowling, Stark heaved himself upright, somehow managing not to tumble off the steps. “What?” he said.

  Jack leaned over and from an ankle holster, pulled a small Smith and Wesson 686 snubnose .38 revolver. He held it up for Stark’s inspection and the man shrugged. “So what?” he mumbled. “You’ve been holding a gun on me for hours now. What difference is one more gonna make?”

  Stark’s eyes widened almost comically in surprise, though, when Jack spun it in his hand and offered it, grip first, to him. He reached forward hesitantly, clearly certain he was being baited into some kind of trap. About a foot from the gun he stopped moving and his hand hovered unsteadily in the air.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jack said. “Take it. We don’t have all night.”

  At that, Stark reached out and plucked the gun delicately out of Jack’s hand, moving with deliberate drunken concentration. He held it in front of his face, examining it almost like a child trying to get a read on a vegetable he’d never seen before.

  Then, moving more quickly than Jack would have expected given the man’s advanced state of inebriation, he pointed the gun more or less at Jack’s midsection and pulled the trigger.

  The dry click sounded like a cannon shot in the early-morning desert quiet. Stark’s shoulders slumped and Jack shrugged. “I told you you’d like your surprise, I didn’t say you’d love it. You didn’t really think I’d give you a loaded weapon, did you?”

  Frustration and anger was evident on Stark’s
face. It flushed even darker than it had from the alcohol and he said, “What the hell am I holding it for, then?”

  “You’ll see,” Jack answered, and opened Blake Standiford’s back door, shoving Stark roughly into the dark house. The drunken man tripped over the threshold and crashed to the floor.

  He lay there for a moment, stunned, and then he panicked. Shoved himself to his feet and staggered sideways, smashing into a wall and falling again.

  Jack closed the door firmly, making no attempt at stealth. He wanted the occupant to hear them. Then he stepped over the flailing Joel Stark and disappeared into Standiford’s living room. The layout of the mobster’s house was fresh in his mind from this morning’s scouting trip and he knew exactly where to go.

  He eased against a wall and waited. This wouldn’t take long.

  31

  Blake heard something.

  A thud/crash downstairs woke him from his alcohol-induced slumber with a start, mid-snore, the darkness of his bedroom all-encompassing. He shook his head and the early-hangover pounding in his skull made him wince. What had he been thinking, drinking himself damned near into a stupor?

  What time was it?

  And more importantly, what the hell was that noise?

  He squinted through fuzzy eyes at his digital clock, one of the early models with numbers printed on tiny cards that flipped down every minute as the time changed like a constantly scrolling rolodex consisting only of numbers.

  Four-thirty.

  He had been asleep—or, more accurately, passed out, he reminded himself—for an hour and a half and he needed a hell of a lot more rest and recovery time than that. His head pounded relentlessly and he felt as though someone had entered his bedroom while he slept and stuffed his mouth full of cotton batting.