by Jon Bassoff
“Like clockwork,” Mylor said. “I’ve seen the first cut of the video and even I’m impressed.”
“Good. Who are you targeting with this one?”
“CCP in Boston.”
“The same guys about to win the airports auction?”
“Yeah. The airport deal is the bait.”
“That’s clever. I like it.”
Mylor laughed. “I thought you would.”
“You’re certain they’re good for the money? The laser system is a much larger transaction altogether.”
“We’ve checked them out. They’ve got plenty in their new fund.”
“Where are we on the others?”
“Eight deals already in place, including this one. Five almost there.”
“And they’re all being fronted by DH&W?”
“As we agreed. Orlando Barrett is heading it up over there.”
“Okay, press ahead with the eight and keep me up to speed on the others.”
“You got it.”
“How quickly can you extend this to the wider list?”
“I already have my people working on them. A lot of the prep’s been done.” Mylor paused. “Maybe a month before—”
“We don’t have that much time.”
“Then I’ll step it up and report back on timescale.”
“Do you need more staff?”
“Not right now. I’ve just hired two more from Langley and I have a few more coming on board soon.”
“Be sure to let me know if you need more bodies. Nothing’s more important than this.”
“Halley knows this won’t be pretty, right?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve spoken to Allen. They all understand the consequences.”
“I sure hope so, because there’s no free ride on this one.”
Chapter 2
It had just started to rain when my Town Car pulled up outside Saint Peter’s homeless shelter on Camden Street. I put my iPhone into silent mode then stepped out of the back of the vehicle. “I should only be a couple of hours,” I said, leaning on the driver’s door. “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over.”
“See you around four then, sir,” my driver said through his open window before tilting his head toward the building. “Watch yourself.”
I glanced over my shoulder. A tall man with long, matted hair stood propped against the railing at the shelter’s entrance. He was wearing a filthy trench coat, mumbling something, and shaking his head as though he was in the middle of an argument with himself. I smiled at my driver. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll be fine.”
When the car pulled away, I walked over to the disheveled man and put my arm around his shoulder. “Come on, Jarel,” I said, feeling his bony frame protruding through the fabric of his coat. “Let’s get you inside, out of this rain.”
Jarel flinched then his face lit up. “Mr. Traynor.” There was a strong smell of alcohol mixed with stale breath.
We entered the building, where I escorted Jarel down the corridor to the open door of the duty manager’s office. The manager looked up from her paperwork and stared over her reading glasses.
“I found Jarel waiting outside,” I said, hoping for a friendly response. “Let’s see if we can get him something to eat and some place to dry off.”
The manager frowned. “Jarel, you know the rules now, don’t you? No one gets to come in before six.”
Jarel rolled his eyes. “I guess I’ll wait outside.” He paused. “In the rain.”
“I think we can break the rules today, Talisha,” I said, reading from the plastic nameplate sitting at the front of the manager’s desk. “Just this once.”
She forced a smile, conceding defeat. “Well, seeing as you’re the chairman, Mr. Traynor, I guess we can make an exception today.”
“That’s right,” said the shelter director, approaching the doorway from behind me. “Let’s get Jarel something to eat.”
I turned, smiled and shook the director’s hand. “Good to see you. Are we all set for the board meeting?”
“Everyone’s here.” The director set off down the corridor. “Let’s go join them.”
I tapped Jarel on the back. “It was nice to see you again, Jarel. Talisha here will take good care of you.” I winked at her and joined the director, who was waiting for me outside the meeting room.
“You look tired, Damon,” the director said, opening the door for me.
I wasn’t offended. He was right. I’d been working all hours recently and, no doubt, it was beginning to show. “We have a lot going on at the moment. In fact, I’m sorry but there’s a chance I’ll get called away this afternoon.” I pointed to the duty manager’s office. “I hope you didn’t mind…”
“You realize Jarel will be back again tomorrow afternoon asking to come in early?”
“I know, but there was no way I could walk by and leave him standing out there in the rain. I didn’t mean to meddle.”
“Hey, you put up most of the money for this place. If you can’t break a few rules, then who can?”
I felt a twinge of embarrassment, hoping the director didn’t think I thought I could do whatever I wanted just because I’d financed the homeless shelter. While I was their main backer, the last thing I wanted was to interfere in operations. I’d always been uneasy with the amount of money people make in private equity. Just because I was good at numbers seemed a strange reason why the market paid me so much more than people who did more valuable work for society. Being able to use some of my money to help others gave me much more pleasure than spending it on toys and things that didn’t really matter. I decided to change the subject. “You know Jarel was a doctor when he was in the army?”
“I do.” The director shook his head. “They all have a story.”
“I’m sorry.” I raised both palms. “Don’t say it. I know I get too personally involved. I can’t help it.”
“There’s no need to apologize. Just wish there were a few more like you.”
An hour into the shelter’s board meeting, I felt my phone vibrate in my jacket pocket. When I took it out, there was a text message from my office: DH&W have promised a decision at four today. I made my apologies to the other members of the board for having to leave early, called my driver, and headed back to my office downtown.
Click here to learn more about Shakedown by Martin Bodenham.
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Here is a preview from When the Lonesome Dog Barks, the third Jace Salome novel by Trey R. Barker…
CHAPTER 1
Late Friday night and Zachary County Deputy Harvey DeGarmo, badge 217, watched the oncoming car. The guy’s brights were on and with any luck at all, he’d forget to dim, DeGarmo would pull him over, and he’d be wildly drunk, ensuring yet another DWI notched in DeGarmo’s duty belt.
DeGarmo loved DWIs.
He hated that people drove drunk because his mother had been hit by a drunk, but he loved arresting drunk drivers. It was good to get them off the road, sure, but also it was just plain fun dealing with drunks. He’d had a guy once, babbled after he was cuffed and sitting in the back of the squad. “You’d…better…uh…cop…if you were…uh…you know…a doctor.”
“Yeah?” DeGarmo had answered. “Cuff ’em, stuff ’em, and slice ’em?”
The drunk had stared at him for a minute, his eyes spinning counter-clockwise. “Hey, man, that shit ain’t funny.”
DeGarmo had laughed.
“Dude, stop laughing…I know the sheriff.”
“Me, too. Maybe the three of us can go to a strip club sometime.”
“Yeah, that’d be great. But…no…uh…offense but you ain’t gonna get no…uh…chicks.” The guy had rubbed his head against the backseat. “Man, you be a better cop you shaved your head.”
DeGarmo laughed at the memory as he continued to watch the car come toward him. “Hang on, Brad, lemme check this guy.”
DeGarmo set his cell phone down. He was talking to his best friend from high school, but wante
d to focus full attention on the on-coming car. He clicked his radar and the tiny red eyes showed him the guy was going thirty-four in a forty zone.
“Drat.”
As the car got within about a half mile, the driver clicked off his high beams.
“Damn.”
The car passed with no violations. The driver, an old man, waved as he passed. DeGarmo gave his red and blues a quick flash as a hello, turned onto a county road, and grabbed his phone.
“Man, tonight’s been crap boring.”
“Don’t say that,” Brad said. “Every time you do, things get crazy.”
“Yeah, well, I could use a little crazy right now.”
DeGarmo liked the back roads, though they weren’t as empty as they used to be. When he’d started on the road ten years ago, before this particular oil and gas boom, before the desert filled up with people looking for work and housing and their early twenty-first century slice of the American Dream, these roads had been hidden in the west Texas darkness. This was where people did crazy stuff, thinking they were anonymous, but anymore, the backroads were full of cars and pickups and oilrig cowboys and service industry trucks, but there wasn’t much action.
“Brad? Hang on.”
DeGarmo pulled up alongside the fence. He was on East County Road 160 and had seen something on the other side of one of the metal fences. Rags or trash, something tossed from a car or a ranch truck. He trained his spotlight on a point about twenty feet beyond the fence. His window was down and all around him, pump jacks banged and clacked, filling the air with the industrial sound of money.
Frowning, he climbed from his cruiser, slipped through the cattle fence, and went about five steps when he saw it. He went back to his car. “Uh…Brad…I gotta go.”
He hung up and grabbed his radio mic. “Zachary County from 217.”
—217 from Zachary County…go ahead—
“Get Sergeant Lawrence out here. Now. I’m on East County Road 160, just a little east of South County Road 1030.”
—10-4…what do you have—
He took a deep breath and realized his hands were shaking. He’d wanted some crazy—maybe a bar fight or a foot chase after a burglary—but this he could have done without.
“Zachary…call Major Jakob’s team, too. And somebody better call a Justice of the Peace. I’ve got two bodies, a male and a female.” He swallowed. “Pretty fresh, too.”
—got it, 217. Hang on—
DeGarmo looked back toward the bodies. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”
CHAPTER 2
“Friday night…stuck here with you.”
Jace Salome patted Jose Urrea’s cheek. “Aww. Don’t you say the sweetest things?”
He blushed, a cherry red star atop his six-foot, two-inch frame. “Don’t touch the merchandise, lady, I ain’t no piece of meat.”
“You are totally a piece of meat and that’s just how we like you.”
He laughed. “Who’s this ‘we’ you speak of?”
She spread her arms wide to her side, indicating the entire cell block. Tonight they were working D Pod—the discipline cases—and the bad boys were already locked down for the night, though more than a few were awake. “All of us. Don’t we, guys?”
Most ignored Jace and those who didn’t gave her the finger.
“Ah…the love of the discipline pod.” Urrea winked.
Jace glanced at Jimmy Davis, a jailer so new he hadn’t even been to the academy yet. He had been with the department a couple months or so and had spent most of his time on the day and afternoon shifts. He’d recently moved to nights and now he walked the upper tier slowly, tugging on doors.
Still trying to get comfortable.
Jace had been exactly where he was—intimidated by a job warehousing people, sure she was going to get hurt or killed, terrified that she’d have to kill someone someday. But now, a year in, she knew with the certainty of the righteous that this was the best job she’d ever had.
“He’s scared to death.” Urrea nodded toward Davis.
“Trying to hide it under absolute confidence.”
“The way I hide my macho side under a warm blanket of sensitivity.”
“‘A warm blanket of sensitivity’? Did you actually just say that?”
“Makes me sound like a good guy, don’t it? Dammit, if it don’t I’ll have to get me a new line for the bars.”
“Your wife lets you go to bars?”
He grinned. “Only when she’s with me.”
“Dork.” Jace went back to her book. It was about evidence collection and analysis. Major Jakob, the woman in charge of Zachary County’s crime lab, had given it to her. This was the fourth time Jace had read it.
—control from 10-4…one to medical…A Pod inner—
From somewhere deep in the jail, Jace and Urrea heard the muffled thud that was the electric lock being opened from the control room.
—control from 10-4…A Pod outer—
—one moving to medical—
Davis keyed up his portable radio. “410 from 476. You need some help?”
—476 from 410. Naw, I’m good. Thanks—
Davis had been hired at the behest of the Southwestern Jail Commission. They oversaw jail standards in this part of the state, reporting directly to Austin and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. They had recommended two additional jailers per shift because of recent deaths in the jail, and Davis was one of those hires; recommended by name to the sheriff by the jail commission. Tonight he was assigned floater status, making him available for whatever came up.
“10-4.” Davis came down off the upper tier and headed for the pod door. “Think I’ll take another walk around the jail, make sure I know where I’m going.”
Urrea laughed. “You been all over days and afternoons, ought to have a pretty good idea where stuff is.”
Davis waggled his eyebrows. “Not the good stuff.”
“I hated bouncing around,” Jace said.
“It’s all right,” Davis said. “Get to see a little bit of everything. I like afternoons best, lots of action, but at least going to all the shifts I get to know damned near everyone.” He rolled his eyes. “All the control room sergeants. They all want stuff done different ways.”
—and my way is the right way, ain’t it, newbie worm?—
Without even looking for a camera, Jace raised a hand and gave Sergeant Bibb a middle finger. Urrea and Davis both laughed.
—such love—
“How long newbies stay on nights? I’m ready to get back to days.”
Urrea shook his head. “You won’t be on days. Not enough seniority, you’ll be on nights.”
“That would suck. Bet I don’t, though, bet you five bucks.”
“Dude, I could bet you a million and not be worried. You’re coming to nights.”
Davis grinned and headed for the door. “You’re missing a good bet, then, if you’re so sure.”
When Davis was gone, Urrea said: “Smit call you about trading a few hours tomorrow night?”
“You didn’t want it?”
“I can’t get in that early. I figured I’d toss it to you.”
“Again, you’re a sweetie.” She blew him a kiss.
“Watch it, wench, I’m married.”
Jace clutched her heart. “I’m devastated.”
“So is half of Zachary City.” He eyed the tiers. “What about these fights?”
“I didn’t realize there were so many.”
“Bad boys all cranked up when the sun’s up. Go to sleepy-time when the sun goes down, I guess.”
“Yet another reason to be on nights: fewer fights.”
Dillon’s warning, delivered during tonight’s roll call, banged away in her head. Lots of fights popping up the last few weeks, he’d said. Lots of tussling and more than a few knocked out teeth and busted ribs.
“Some of it’s our regular mopes,” Dillon had said. “But I think mostly it’s transients.”
Men who’d
come for the oil field jobs, cracking the earth open with fracking fluids. They tended to be younger, less in control of themselves, and highly paid.
“Drunk, stoned, and stupid,” Laimo had said.
Jace had waited, expecting a retort from Rory Bogan, a former jailer who was now at the academy learning to be a road officer. When no smart-assed comments came, Jace realized again, abruptly, that her partner was gone from the jail for good.
From the far end of the upper tier, someone moaned. Loud and long. An inmate named Franco. He’d been moaning all night. Jace and Urrea had checked on him as soon as they’d come on duty. He didn’t come out of his cell, didn’t ask for medical, didn’t cause a problem. He said he had a stomach ache, probably the flu, and he’d be fine.
“Dude, shut the hell up, already.” An anonymous voice from the lower tier.
“Getting tired of listening to yo’ ass, loser.”
Then lots of voices, all riled to wakefulness, some laughing, while a cascade of catcalls fell from everywhere like a hot rain.
Urrea gave a quick look to all the doors, upper and lower tiers, then ran his eyes across the computer to make sure all the doors were secured. The computer screen was embedded in the jailers’ desk and had two LEDs for each cell door, green for closed and locked and red for open and unsecured. “We’re good.”
“Good.” Jace didn’t want an issue tonight. Tonight she wanted calm. She wanted to read her book and let it, through its mélange of technical terms, take her away from the strain pressing her and Gramma over the last couple of months.
—control from 410…medical outer—
The medical pod was on the far side of the jail from D Pod so Urrea and Jace didn’t hear the electric lock.
—and medical inner, please—
Urrea eyeballed the inmates who were awake, listening through the din of those catcalling. His breath slowed, which Jace knew was a sign of him getting ready for whatever might come, his focus tight. She watched him watch everything. He could sense when storms were brewing and when they’d need to call the emergency response team. But he also knew—and this was the lesson Jace was still trying to learn—when the ERTs were not needed and when the storm would die for lack of unstable air.
