She shrugged, “Maybe more, but the only one I ever saw. Julie was the recruiter,” Nikki said. “She was high up in the organization. Once she had you broke in, she handed you off to one of the handlers.”
“Like Mickey.”
“Yeah, like Luis, who gave you to Mickey.”
“So, if you had such a great gig, why were you on a street corner?” Blackhawk said.
They were both silent for a moment. Then Nikki said, “Mickey said we were stealing. Not giving him all the money. He tells you to get in the car, you get in the car. He didn’t tell us where we were going until we got to that street corner. Then he said as punishment we had to work the street for a week. Blow jobs in the back alley. Teach us a lesson.”
I shook my head. “So, were you?”
“Was I what?”
“Stealing.”
Simone looked sheepish, “Yeah, not much, but yeah.”
“So what do you do now?” Blackhawk asked Indigo.
“Damned if I know,” she said.
There was a knock at the door. Nobody moved. I looked at Indigo. She shook her head and picked up the Beretta. She put it under the pillow. Nikki got up, went to the door and peered through the peep hole.
“Looks like room service,” she said.
Blackhawk looked at me and cocked his head toward the bedroom. I followed him in. Indigo was watching us. We both stepped back to where we could see but not be seen. I pointed at Indigo.
“Open the door,” Indigo said.
3
The first guy pushing through the door was tall and rangy, wearing an ill-fitting casino jacket. Great disguise except for the jeans, the boots and the cowboy hat. He had a pistol in his hand. He was immediately followed by a big Mexican guy with a bandage on the side of his head and a mouse under his left eye. He also had a pistol. The two men came quickly into the room waving their pistols. They were followed by the third guy. A dapper dandy with a thousand-dollar suit and a seven hundred-dollar Glock.
“Don’t nobody move,” the cowboy shouted.
Nobody moved.
Indigo sat calmly on the couch, like this happened every day.
The cowboy looked back at the dandy. “She one of yours?”
The dandy shook his head. “Don’t know who she is. Probably trying to take your place.” He nodded toward Nikki. “You’ve been a bad girl, Nikki,” he said.
“Fuck you, Luis,” she said. Frightened but defiant.
“Oh, you’ve already done that. And now I want my property back.”
Nikki just stared at him. “How did you find me?”
Luis smiled. “We can always find you,” he said.
“Let’s just do’m and get out of here,” the cowboy said.
Luis looked at the Mexican. “Shut the door.”
The Mexican kicked the door shut.
“Get it over with,” Luis said. The cowboy turned and lifted his pistol. Blackhawk and I stepped through the bedroom door.
“Oops,” I said.
Everyone froze, the three guys and the two girls turning their heads to look at us. Indigo kept her eyes on the cowboy.
Indigo, Blackhawk and I held a distinctive advantage. We had been trained in the protocols of a close quarter fire fight. As with everything, there was a science to it. If everyone began firing willy nilly, we might all choose to shoot the same guy. That left the not shot to shoot us. So, following our trained protocol, Indigo shot the cowboy through her lap pillow. As he fell, she shot him again. I shot the Mexican. I was in the middle and so was he. Actually, I shot him three times. Must have been the adrenalin. Blackhawk was apparently feeling benevolent. He shot Luis in the knee. Luis screamed and fell to the carpet, his pistol clattering under the coffee table. The shots of all three of us seemed as one.
The explosions were deafening and made my ears ring. I looked at Blackhawk like what the hell?
“He didn’t look very dangerous,” he said.
“Those are the ones that will kill you,” Indigo said.
Simone was on the floor, her hands on her ears, rocking back and forth, saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God” over and over. Nikki had her back to the wall, staring at Luis as he writhed on the floor.
Nikki looked to Indigo, then to me. “Who the hell are you guys?”
Blackhawk knelt beside Luis. Luis’s eyes were all scrunched closed. He was holding his knee, rocking back and forth, making a high pitched keening sound. Blackhawk took hold of his ear and twisted it sharply. The pain popped Luis’s eyes open.
“This is your lucky day,” Blackhawk said quietly. “I didn’t feel like killing you today. But, make no mistake, if I ever see you again, I will kill you.”
He reached inside Luis’s jacket and took his phone. I stepped over to the cowboy and the hapless pimp, Mickey, and took their phones. Blackhawk stood. He looked at Indigo. “It’s time to go,” he said.
“I don’t have to tell you, there are surveillance cameras on every floor,” she said as she stood.
“I’ll take care of it,” Blackhawk said. He looked at me. “Take the girls out of here, go through the parking lot and walk until you can’t see this place anymore.” He pulled his phone and hit a speed dial number. I could hear it connect. I recognized Nacho’s voice as he answered.
“Get the band van and wait for Jackson to call,” Blackhawk said. He disconnected. “Time to go,” he said again.
Indigo must have agreed. She was stuffing everything she had into a small carry-on piece of luggage.
Blackhawk grabbed Luis by the collar and dragged him through the bedroom door. He slung him into the bathroom. I pulled the dead cowboy into the bedroom, then went back for Mickey the hapless pimp. As I pulled his lifeless body in, Blackhawk was pressing his Sig Sauer against Luis’s forehead. Luis looked sick with fear.
“You stick your head out of here, I’ll shoot it off,” Blackhawk said.
Blackhawk stepped out and closed the door. He moved by me and I closed the bedroom door. Blackhawk went to the front door and opened it carefully. He peered out, checking both ways.
“All clear,” he said. He looked at me. “After I take care of the surveillance footage I’ll go to the club.”
“How are you going to do that?” Nikki said. “Take care of the surveillance stuff?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. I took her by the elbow and moved her toward the door. “Time to go.”
As I took the girls out into the hallway, Indigo pointed her Beretta at the bedroom door. “That’s a mistake leaving him,” she said.
“It’s my mistake,” Blackhawk said steadily.
They looked at each other for a moment, then she shrugged and put the Beretta away. I had the girls on each arm and did my best to saunter down the hall to the elevators. Indigo waited, then followed, pulling the suitcase and looking like the everyday guest. We caught the first elevator, and she waited for the next one.
4
When we stepped off the elevators, we were laughing and having a good old time. We made our way toward the front doors, stopping twice to run my casino card through a slot machine. I didn’t win. We moved casually, not anxious, nothing abnormal.
We got lucky. As we reached the front, a group of seniors was disembarking from a shuttle van. I hustled the girls out and timed it so as the last two old ladies stepped off the van, I stepped on. The driver looked surprised. I held a hundred-dollar bill toward him. His eyes widened.
“What’s your name?” I asked. Nobody is dangerous that asks for your name.
“Oliver,” he said.
“Do you like to be called Oliver, or Ollie?”
“My friends call me Ollie.”
“Well, Ollie, I need a very small favor, and I’m willing to pay you a hundred bucks for it.”
“What kind of favor?”
“We need a ride. Just a couple of blocks down that outside side street.”
“I’m not supposed to…..” he started.
“Only take five minutes,” I sa
id, shaking the bill at him. “You’ll be right back here in no time.”
He looked around, leaned down to look at the casino entrance, then with a quick move, the bill disappeared from my hand. I waved the girls aboard. I could see Indigo coming through the automatic doors.
The driver started to close the van doors. “Hold on,” I said. “I have one more.”
I stepped down on the last step so Indigo could see me. She walked over, head down and carried her suitcase aboard. As she slid into a seat, she looked at me, cocking her head with a frown.
“Just got lucky,” I said.
The driver shut the door and carefully pulled away from the curb. He slowly wound his way through the lot. I directed him out the entrance and had him take the access road that had been built just for the casino. He drove until we had a turn in the road and the casino was no longer in sight. I had him pull to the curb.
We all got off. The van did a U-turn and pulled away. I called Nacho.
“Superboy,” he said by way of greeting.
I ignored him. I told him where we were.
“I have no idea where that is,” he said. “Lived here my whole life, and never have been out there.”
“It’s new. Use the GPS on your phone.”
“The world’s going to technological hell,” he said, and I hung up.
The girls were watching me. “Our ride’s on the way,” I said.
“What club?” Indigo said.
“You’ll see,” I said.
The girls sat on the curb. I stood and waited. It took Nacho a half hour to get there.
The van turned the corner and came toward us. It was an old blue, faded Chevy that Elena had insisted Blackhawk buy so the band would have something to transport all the instruments and equipment in. Blackhawk had tried to explain to her that she and her big salsa band never played anywhere other than at his nightclub, the El Patron. “You never know,” she said.
Nacho pulled the van to the curb beside us. As he swung out of the driver’s side, the door screeched as only metal on metal can.
As he came around, I said, “Ladies, this unspeakably ugly specimen is Nacho.”
“Superboy is just jealous,” Nacho said. He opened the sliding side door for the girls. He picked up Indigo’s suitcase. He carried it around to the back and opened the back double-doors.
“As well he should be,” Indigo said.
“He’s huge,” Simone said softly, as if Nacho wasn’t right there.
Nacho was large. Next to Nacho, Mickey the pimp would look like a female soccer player. While his waist was small, Nacho’s shoulders and arms were massive. His hair was black, glossy and long. His face bore the scars of years fighting the street gang battles. He was Blackhawk’s Segundo. His right hand. An ex-con who wanted to go straight but couldn’t find anyone to hire him until he met Blackhawk. As he would say, he had done the crime, done the time and didn’t want to go back. Neither he nor Blackhawk would ever talk about it, but something had happened that had indebted and bonded Nacho to Blackhawk with a loyalty that only brothers can understand.
We loaded, the girls in the far back, Indigo in the middle and me in the passenger seat. As she climbed in, Nikki said to me, “Does he always call you Superboy?”
“He’s just being a smart ass.”
As Nacho started the van, Indigo said, “Hey Nacho, why do you call him Superboy?”
I just shook my head.
“Everybody buckled up?” Nacho said. He looked in the mirrors and pulled away from the curb.
He glanced at me and laughed. “Blackhawk don’t talk much but every great once in a while he’d talk about this guy. To hear him tell it, Superboy here could do everything but fly.”
“Superboy,” Indigo laughed, leaning forward and slapping the back of my head.
“Never mind any of that,” I said. Looking at Nacho I said, “Take us back to the club. Take the long way. Make sure we’re not followed.”
He took the van in a wide U-turn and drove back the way we had come. A few moments after we had passed the casino, we were on the access ramp merging onto the southbound 101. We rode in silence for a long time.
Finally, Simone said, “Tell us one of those Superboy stories.”
“Yeah, Nacho. Tell us a story,” Indigo said.
“I can’t,” Nacho said. “I’m sworn to secrecy. If I told you, he might have to kill you.”
“He’d have to get in line,” Simone said.
5
Nacho pulled the van into the El Patron parking lot. The El Patron was a good place in a bad neighborhood. Maybe when Blackhawk had first come to it, it might have fit in, but now it was a little bit of Vegas set in the southside, below the Durango curve. A large two-story rectangular block building with a terra cotta shingle roof surrounded by a large asphalt parking lot. A transformed industrial building that was forty thousand square feet of pulsating fun. The Vegas part was the neon that Blackhawk had recently added. Just to help the uninformed to find it. The surrounding neighborhood was run down. But once you found yourself inside the double doors of the El Patron, if you didn’t have fun, it was your fault.
Under one roof were three nightclubs. One was for the country folks who liked their boot scooting and cold tap beer. The other was a nightly psychedelic barrage of Guns and Roses and Aerosmith. Both rooms were heavily insulated to keep the noise inside. At the far end of the hallway that dissected the interior, was the largest of the clubs. This was where Blackhawk’s lady, Elena, held forth with her large salsa band. While the other two did okay, this one was packed every night she performed.
Nacho had dropped us at the back-delivery dock where Elena had been waiting. She led us through the storage room, on through the bar and then up the stairs. The stairs led to a landing that had one door. At the end of the landing was a large, window-sized mirror. It was two way. The door opened to the hallway that led to the door of the living quarters and further down, the door to Blackhawk’s office, which sported the two-way mirror. Elena opened the door to the apartment and held it as we filed in.
The living area was spacious with expensive furnishings. Elena followed us in and moved to the wet bar that occupied the far corner.
She turned to look at us, especially at Indigo.
“My name is Elena,” she said. “This where Blackhawk and I live.” She said this with emphasis. “Can I get anyone something to drink?”
No one wanted anything.
“Please sit and make yourselves comfortable, Blackhawk will be here shortly,” she said. She looked at me and tilted her head to the other room. She turned, expecting me to follow. I did.
Once in the other room she turned. “What is going on? Who are those people?”
“Didn’t Blackhawk tell you?”
“I was drying my hair. He left a voicemail, and now he’s not answering his phone. He just said to expect you, he didn’t say why. Who are those people?”
“The two young ones are prostitutes. The older one, the one they call Jane, is someone Blackhawk and I knew a longtime ago.”
Elena gave me her look. “Maybe you should explain this to me,” she said.
So, I did.
I had to hand it to her, she didn’t interrupt. When I finished she turned and went into the kitchen. She opened the stainless-steel refrigerator and extracted a bottle of water. She twisted off the cap and tossed it into the stainless-steel wastebasket that was under the sink.
She took a long drink, then looked at me. “So tell me again about the woman you say they call Jane. Like maybe that isn’t her name?”
“She was part of our unit,” I said.
“The only woman,” Elena said. “Blackhawk told me of her. She was called Indigo.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And now she shows up with these girls?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Is she a prostitute?”
“No,” I said. “She just met them.”
“Just a coincidence?” she said.
This time I didn’t say “yes”. I shrugged instead.
“Helluva coincidence,” she said.
I went back to saying yes.
“And three men busted into their room and were going to shoot them. All three.”
“Well, they didn’t just bust in. One of the girls let them in.”
“Let them in?”
“Accidently,” I said.
“You sure?”
Good question. I thought about it. “Yeah, accidentally.”
“So now Blackhawk wants to hide them here?”
“I think so,” I said. “I haven’t talked to him about it.”
“With men wanting to kill them, he wants them here?”
I shrugged. “When he gets here, we will find out what he wants.”
Elena looked at me a long time. Finally, she said, “Most of the time I am glad you came back into his life.” I started to say something. She shook her head. “But sometimes I am not so glad.” She brushed by me and went back out to the living room.
6
Elena got them settled into the two guest rooms. The first thing the girls wanted was a shower. Elena made sure they had what they needed, using some of her personal stuff, including a hairdryer. She had a rehearsal, so after she got them settled, she left Indigo and me in the apartment.
“Drink?” I said, moving to the wet bar.
Indigo shook her head, “Maybe later.” She watched me as I fixed mine. I fixed a Boodles with a drop of bitters. I stirred it with my finger. She was smiling.
I took a drink. Always delicious. I looked at her. “What?”
She shook her head. “You are thinking this is just too big a coincidence.”
“Big coincidence,” I agreed.
“Imagine how I feel. What were you two doing at that casino, anyway?”
I took the drink and sat on the oversized couch. “The casino’s manager is a fan of Elena’s. Sometimes he comes here to watch her perform. He and Blackhawk were talking, and he mentioned he had a problem with someone cheating the slot machines. He asked Blackhawk to look into it. He took me along.”
They Called Her Indigo Page 2
