Unleashed

by Jacob Stone

  Pay it forward. That was the way he saw it.

  He left the cramped bathroom that was just big enough to hold a sink, toilet, shower stall, and a few dozen silverfish, and went to his studio apartment’s kitchen area, ignoring the roaches that scattered. He spooned instant coffee into a dirty mug and filled it with hot water. He took a sip of it, made a face, dumped the rest of it in the sink, and got the last can of beer out of the refrigerator.

  The place really was a dump. Not only did he have roaches and silverfish, but he was finding mice pellets on the small counter space and in one of the cabinets. He’d find better living accommodations once he got his hands on the right honeypot and started making some serious money. Sooner or later that would happen. In the meantime, whining was for losers and he wasn’t a loser. That was for damn sure.

  He took the beer back to the bed and sat and drank. When he was done, he put on a pair of boxers and badly-worn jeans, and slipped on a long-sleeve knit shirt that covered the snarling wolf’s-face tattoo on the underside of his right wrist.

  He was in the middle of running a scam, but he wouldn’t know until tomorrow whether it would pay off. For now, he was nearly tapped out and he needed to raise some cash. If he could cause some pain along the way, even better.

  Readinger left the apartment in search of someone to victimize.

  Chapter 16

  When Stonehedge stepped into the dive bar, the thick-necked bartender glanced his way and gave him a suspicious look, as if he didn’t belong there. It was possible the actor was misreading things and that it was simply because of the bartender’s craggy bald head and bushy horseshoe mustache that the man appeared more sinister than he really was. Whichever it turned out to be, Stonehedge was glad Morris had taken him to a secondhand store so he could ditch the suit for a pair of khakis and a button-down flannel shirt. Even though the suit he was wearing earlier was bought cheap off the rack and fit poorly, he still would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb in this place wearing any kind of suit. A quick look at the dozen or so patrons in the bar, and he was especially glad Morris had suggested he rub dirt and grease on the clothing before putting it on. The actor continued to the bar and waited as the bartender took his time to come over.

  The bartender gave him a hard, flinty look. “This is a cash-only establishment,” he warned.

  Morris had earlier given Stonehedge a battered and badly-worn billfold to use so that the actor wouldn’t ruin his disguise by pulling out a 500-dollar Bottega Veneta men’s wallet. He dug the billfold out of his back pants pocket and removed a twenty-dollar bill, which he put on the bar.

  “A Bud and a shot of bourbon. Pour a shot for yourself.”

  If this impressed the bartender, he didn’t show it, his expression remaining as wooden as a tree stump. He collected the twenty, poured a draft of Bud in a glass that had lipstick and other smudges on it, dug a brand of bourbon from the bottom shelf that Stonehedge had never heard of before, and poured a shot, which he pushed in front of the actor.

  The bartender showed Stonehedge a screw-you smile. “I decided I’d rather keep the cash than drink this rotgut bourbon,” he said.

  “No doubt a wise decision.” Stonehedge was thoroughly enjoying being in disguise and playing an undercover cop, and this was maybe the most fun he’d had since he got to play detective with Morris on the SCK investigation. That might’ve been why the bartender’s surly disposition brought out a thin, cocksure smile from him. He took a sniff of the bourbon, which smelled worse than kerosene, but he swallowed it down in a single gulp, then chased it with the Bud, ignoring the potential diseases he could be picking up from the glass, comforting himself with the thought that the rotgut alcohol would kill anything short of the bubonic plague. It was all part of the experience he was soaking in.

  “I didn’t come here to bask in the glow of your delightful personality.” Stonehedge picked up the empty shot glass. “Or to drink this lighter fluid, which isn’t bad as far as lighter fluid goes. I’m looking for Trey Johnson, and I was told he likes to frequent this establishment.”

  The actor’s manner, confidence, and language had thrown the bartender off-guard. He looked unsure of himself as he shook his head and said he didn’t know what Stonehedge was talking about.

  “You don’t have to.” Stonehedge dug a pen out of his pocket and scribbled the number for a burner phone onto a napkin. “Just tell Johnson to call me. That I have a mutually beneficial business opportunity I’d like to discuss with him.”

  He handed the napkin to the bartender, who peered at it before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it onto the floor.

  “That can always be smoothed out after I leave, assuming you didn’t memorize the number,” Stonehedge said with a wink. He got off the barstool, dug out his billfold again, and left another twenty on the bar. “I’ll pay you fifty more if you get Johnson to call me, even if we don’t end up doing business together.”

  The bartender looked as if he was trying to keep his mouth clamped shut, but he couldn’t help himself from asking Stonehedge who sent him there.

  “Duane Crawford.”

  Morris had gotten the name of the bar and a description of the bartender to seek out from one of Dennis Polk’s sources. The source didn’t know the bartender’s name, only that everyone called him Tex, even though the guy claimed to be from Washington State originally. Polk’s source had also given them Crawford as one of Trey Johnson’s associates. Crawford had been in lockup at MCJ for the last two months, and Stonehedge caught Tex nodding slightly to himself, as if he were thinking that Stonehedge must’ve just gotten out of MCJ himself.

  Stonehedge left the bar without looking back, not wanting to give the bartender a chance to ask him any further questions, because if he was asked to describe Crawford or anything else about the man he would’ve been stumped. He found Morris parked half a block away on the other side of the street facing the bar, and joined him in the car.

  “I had no idea bourbon could taste that bad,” Stonehedge said, laughing. “Damn, I used to drink some low-quality stuff when I was starting out as a struggling actor, but nothing like that cat piss. On the positive side, I probably don’t need a tetanus shot from putting my lips on the filthiest beer glass you’ve ever seen. I gotta believe that cat piss would kill any germs. A hundred and ninety proof, at least.”

  “All part of the job,” Morris said. “Sorry, but no extra hazard pay for having to drink bottom-shelf booze.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not getting paid anything.”

  “That’s true too,” Morris agreed. “Such is life for a Hollywood star wanting to slum with us little folks.”

  “Yeah, well, that was certainly slumming in there!”

  “No doubt. What’s your gut telling you?”

  “That I’ll survive that shot of cat piss.”

  Morris peered over at him, his eyes half-lidded as he saw that the actor had said this completely straight-faced and without the hint of a grin. “Are we on the right track?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Stonehedge popped a mint in his mouth to get rid of the unpleasant taste. “Crawford’s name struck a chord with good ol’ Tex. So what next?”

  Morris reached behind him so he could offer the actor a takeout bag from the Oak Grill. Stonehedge fished inside of it and selected the roasted lamb sandwich with fennel and herbed tahini on focaccia, and handed Morris back the bag. Inside were three other wrapped sandwiches. Morris had picked up enough so they could have lunch and dinner while staking out the bar, if needed. He also had in the car a supply of bottled water, snacks, and two empty milk jugs so they could return the water when the time came. He took one of the prime rib sandwiches for himself.

  “We watch, we wait, and we eat.”

  Stonehedge crunched the mint he was sucking on into dust. After grabbing a bottle of water and taking a healthy swig, he unwrapped the sandwich, took a bite, and no
dded his approval.

  “The pay might suck, but at least the food’s good,” he noted.

  “The only reason I’ve been able to keep Polk on the payroll,” Morris said, as he chewed on a mouthful of prime rib, horseradish, onion, tomato, and ciabatta. Maybe they’d get lucky and Trey Johnson would call soon, or maybe they’d spot him heading toward the bar, but more likely they had a long wait ahead of them. Johnson was the last connection Morris had found to Grace Warren, and he didn’t like what he saw when he looked at Johnson’s sheet: A violent man who liked to rob and pistol-whip tourists.

  Morris knew when they found Johnson that the man wouldn’t voluntarily tell them about Grace, but that was a problem to worry about later. First things first.

  He settled into his seat for what he expected to be a long wait.

  Chapter 17

  Duncan hadn’t lifted a wallet from a mark’s pants pocket since he was nineteen, but he’d been quite skillful at it back then. He damn well should’ve been! When he was nine, Wainwright forced him to practice for hours at a stretch, smacking him hard enough in the head to knock him on his ass every time he failed to meet Wainwright’s unusually high standards. At that age he had small hands and thin, nimble fingers, which helped, but the trick to being a successful pickpocket was the same for being a magician—namely, misdirection. Sleight-of-hand skills were important, but you needed to strike when the mark was distracted, and Duncan could see that he was about to have an opportunity.

  For the last hour he’d been watching the couple that he mostly decided was going to be his next victims; mostly, because it depended on whether they were locals or tourists. At that moment the husband was paying too much attention to his wife and was oblivious to the middle-aged woman walking toward him. The woman, for her part, was loaded with shopping bags, had just dug her phone out of her designer pocketbook, and was seconds away from a collision. Duncan watched as this unfolded, and he picked up his pace so he could make up the distance between himself and the husband, timing it so that he was slipping the wallet from the husband’s back pocket the moment the woman smacked into him.

  What do you know, he thought. Just like riding a bike. You never lose it.

  He heard the husband sputtering out an apology, and he caught the accusatory and icy stare that the woman gave him back in return. Neither of them noticed him walking off with the pilfered wallet tucked under his sports jacket.

  Well, the temporarily pilfered wallet.

  He was going to have to return it. A lot of these Rodeo Drive stores had video surveillance and some of their cameras would be pointed toward the front of the stores, capturing what went on outside. Duncan knew the police wouldn’t start pulling video because of a stolen wallet, but they would if the husband later connected the theft to his wife being butchered by an intruder wearing a ski mask.

  He went through the wallet and found the driver’s license. The husband’s name was George Campbell and he had a Los Angeles address. While Duncan had nothing against the idea of killing tourists, and in some ways preferred the idea of it, too many hotels had security cameras in the lobby, on each floor, and in the elevators, and so he was relieved to see that the Campbells were locals. George and Meagan. He had earlier learned the wife’s name by eavesdropping on them. They just seemed perfect for what he wanted. Both of them were wearing expensive designer clothing and had stylish haircuts, and both were obviously members of the oh-so excusive beautiful and privileged club. George Campbell was tall, broad-shouldered, and good-looking—the type who would’ve played quarterback for his high school football team. Meagan was a pretty little thing with shoulder-length auburn hair and sexy-as-hell almond-shaped hazel eyes. They were so into each other that Duncan could almost taste the bile in the back of his throat as he watched them. Yeah, they were what he wanted.

  But for now he needed to return the wallet to Campbell’s back pocket.

  They were half a block away, arms wrapped around each other as they did a little window-shopping at one of the upscale women’s clothing stores. When Duncan saw the two of them enter the store, he swore under his breath. He had to get the wallet back to Campbell before the guy realized it was missing, which meant he had to go into the same store, which further meant there’d probably be video surveillance of the two of them together. But what were the odds the cops would search for that? Zero to none. He had to quit sweating the little stuff.

  He took a deep breath as he concentrated to relax his facial muscles, and then headed to the same store. Once inside, he spotted the Campbells by the lingerie department. Meagan was holding up a skimpy and mostly see-through nightgown to get George’s opinion, and the husband was clearly enjoying himself. Perfect. The two of them were already distracted.

  Duncan headed to the same department, picked up a pair of lace underwear that would at best cover only 10 percent of a woman’s ass cheeks, and then while examining the underwear he “accidentally” bumped into Campbell, while at the same time slipping the wallet into his back pocket.

  “Ah, I’m sorry,” Duncan apologized, making his voice higher-pitched and raspier than it normally was so the husband wouldn’t recognize it later.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Campbell said without looking back enough to get a good look at Duncan. “It happens.”

  Duncan caught Campbell freezing, as if a thought had just occurred to him, then a quick pat on his back pocket. His features relaxed after feeling the outline of his wallet and realizing that he was being paranoid thinking he might’ve had his wallet picked. Duncan flashed the wife an embarrassed smile, who smiled sweetly back in return.

  A nice kid, he thought. He also realized for the first time that he must’ve had a type for the women he wanted to kill. He had run across other happy, beautiful and privileged, in-love couples he could’ve picked since coming to Los Angeles, but so far he had only chosen couples where the woman was a pretty little thing, like Meagan Campbell. Jill Kincade was a little curvier than this one and Hannah Kammer, but they were all five feet two or shorter, all slender with thin legs and small breasts, and none of them weighed more than a hundred pounds. They also all had very pretty faces. Yeah, he had a type, all right. And even though two of them were blondes, he knew why he was really picking them, although he hadn’t realized it until then. In a way, it was startling; in another way, it made perfect sense.

  He put the underwear back and then made a show of examining several other pairs so he wouldn’t look overly suspicious, all the while keeping his back to George Campbell. Meagan Campbell had gotten a good look at him, but that didn’t matter.

  Duncan hung around for what he considered an appropriate amount of time and then left the store.

  Chapter 18

  Morris didn’t need to bring the empty milk jugs, since there was another bar two doors from where he had parked, and Stonehedge paid the bartender twenty dollars for bathroom privileges for them. Stonehedge had left the car ten minutes ago to take advantage of those privileges, and Morris sat as still as a granite block, his hands folded over his belly and his eyes mostly, but not completely, closed. Natalie wouldn’t have been fooled, and neither would any of the cops or MBI investigators who had ever joined him on a stakeout, but almost anyone else looking at him would’ve thought he was about to nod off. He wasn’t. Instead, he was in a Zen state, fully relaxed, but still watching for Trey Johnson. This was a skill he had mastered after dozens of stakeouts over the years.

  Stonehedge left the bar and rejoined Morris in the car. Grinning, he asked Morris how many fingers he held up when he left the bar. Morris moved only his right hand so he could show the actor the same finger that was shown to him.

  Stonehedge broke out laughing. “Very good,” he said. “I know you’ve got this Buddha act pretty well perfected, but I needed to make sure you didn’t fall asleep while I was gone. Otherwise, who knows? Trey Johnson might’ve slipped past you and might right now be in the Rattlesn
ake.”

  The Rattlesnake was the bar they were staking out. “Very thoughtful of you,” Morris breathed out in a soft whisper.

  Stonehedge’s burner phone rang. Morris opened his eyes and glanced over at him. The only person who was given the burner’s number was the bartender at the Rattlesnake. The actor answered the call.

  “Yeah? Who’s this?” he said.

  A man answered, his voice as slick as an oil spill as he said, “The guy you’ve been asking about.”

  “Sorry, fella. I’ve got feelers out with four potential business partners. So how about you tell me your name?”

  Johnson sounded disappointed as he reluctantly did as Stonehedge asked. “How much money’s involved?” he demanded.

  “Two hundred grand, at least. Should be more. We split it evenly.”

  “What’s the setup?”

  “I’ll tell you that when we meet. How fast can you get to K-Town?”

  “Pal, why don’t you tell me first how you know Crawford.”

  “I met Duane while I was sitting in MCJ. A charming fellow.”

  “Why were you in MCJ?”

  “I had a business venture that busted out because I picked the wrong guy for a partner. I’m not making that mistake again.”