by Brian Drake
Wolf took his drink to another stool by the wall, leaned back.
The bell clanged again. Two men pushed through and gave the place a fast right-to-left scan. “There she is,” the bigger of the two said. His finger-snap turned into a point. Right at the brunette.
She screamed.
The tall one had a crew cut and his bulkier partner a bent nose. They strode toward the girl. The brunette flung her coffee mug but missed, the thick liquid coating some of the floor, the mug clattering nearby without breaking. The cook yanked a revolver from under the counter, said, “Any trouble and I’ll--” but what he’d do he never said as Crew Cut snatched the gun and used it like a club against the cook’s head. The cook’s face tightened up and he thudded onto the floor.
Crew Cut flipped the captured gun into the air, catching it with finger on trigger. He did a 180 with his new toy at the hip. “Everybody stay put.”
The girl wasn’t cooperating. She screamed a second time, jumping for a door to the left of her booth. The knob didn’t budge, and she pressed against the wall, eyes wide, body stiff. She shouted, “No!” as Bent Nose stepped within reach.
Crew Cut pivoted to help his buddy. Wolf reached for the .45 and put a bullet in Crew Cut’s left leg.
The thug screamed and crashed to the floor. The counter covered Wolf as he dropped beside the man, grabbed the revolver, and smashed the barrel across his head.
Bent Nose spun around. Wolf put two rounds into his chest. He slammed back against an empty table and fell to the floor, where he stayed.
Wolf put his gun away and approached the girl. “It’s okay,” he said, but as he stepped closer she screamed and launched at him with clawing hands. Wolf covered his face, which left his lower half exposed, and she landed a punch in his solar plexus. Air left him and he doubled over. The woman raced by. The bell above the door announced her exit.
Wolf faced the gaping bystanders still in their booths.
A man asked if he was a policeman.
“No,” Wolf said.
The cabbie asked if maybe they should call 9-1-1.
“Knock yourself out,” Wolf said, inhaling a deep breath.
While the cabbie jawed on a cell phone Wolf patted Crew Cut’s pockets and found a thick leather wallet. A pat down of the other produced spare ammunition and another fat wallet. An item in the girl’s booth caught his eye, a beat-up day planner. He stashed the items in his London Fog and went behind the counter to splash some water in the cook’s face. The cook moaned.
He went out to the Chrysler and raced away.
Ben Regan said, “I’m hearing things, Teddy.”
“Your hotel room haunted?”
“Things from back home.”
“Oh, really?” Teddy Gambolini said.
They sat at a park bench, Teddy with a bag of bread pieces in hand, smiling at the flock of pigeons around them. Regan, his legs crossed, examined his fingernails.
Gambolini fed pigeons for the therapy they provided. The solitude let his mind wander. He enjoyed the fresh air. Sometimes, he could talk to the pigeons about stuff, both verbally and in his head, and they wouldn’t judge. The birds could be trusted not to repeat anything, and their cooing sometimes punctuated a thought in just the right way. As soon as the bread ran out, even if he hadn’t finished talking, they’d find another benefactor, the fickle beasts, but he kept coming back.
Today was different.
“Palakis made some calls,” Regan said. “Guess who’s come out to help?”
“Big Bird?”
“Miles Kincaid. Remember him?”
“Sure.” Gambolini tossed some crumbs near Regan’s feet and several birds swarmed his ankles. He kicked them away. Teddy laughed.
“I bet you’d like another crack at the guy.”
“A bigger question is, should we eliminate the trail that leads to us? That will be Kincaid’s first move.”
“Get a couple guys together and get going,” Gambolini said.
“’Kay,” Regan said, and walked away.
Gambolini tossed more bread. The pigeons sucked it up, loitered, heads bopping back and forth. From behind, a truck rumbled by and shook the ground. A few of the pigeons flew away. Others paused a few moments before they followed. Gambolini shook his head. Pigeons were like people. No idea what they’re doing but they follow the first one who moves.
10
After breakfast, Wolf set the dishes in the hall and sat on the couch with the wallets and day planner he’d collected at the diner.
He opened the day planner and found black-and-white headshots of the girl, her hair long and flowing, with appropriate touches of make-up. At the bottom edge of each photo was her name, Holly Mendoza, and a local address. A page showed a list of local theaters, and scheduled auditions, while another page showed phone numbers and addresses. In the back of the planner, sheathed in a plastic cover, were more pictures. One of them showed Holly posing at the edge of a pier with a blond man in a leather jacket. Wolf knew the man.
He’d been in charge of the gun runners at the warehouse and his men had called him “Ace”.
Wolf set the day planner aside. Should he forward the information to Kiki so she could alert the Feds? He shook his head. If the gang needed to get rid of the girl because she might talk, Wolf needed to get involved his own way. He turned his attention to the wallets.
Bent Nose: Daniel Hoffman. Crew Cut: Kevin Morris. Neither had any business cards or pictures. Each wallet held a thousand dollars in cash. He took a grand from one wallet and tucked the cash into the day planner. When he found Holly, she’d need the cash to get out of the city.
Wolf stood up and took down one of the two paintings above the couch, a Mona Lisa knock-off. The other featured somebody who looked like Napoleon. Worthless garage sale stuff if somebody only paid attention to the front. Wolf placed the Mona Lisa on the coffee table front side down. Flicking a little clasp on the back, he swung open a hidden door. Cash gleamed from the hollow back. Wolf added the other thousand to the collection, closed the back, and returned the painting to its hook.
He went to his bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out a large steamer trunk. He rummaged through the junk and found a black leather wallet with a gold first-grade detective badge and a police identification card.
He’d start with Holly’s home, check out her workplace, find some trail to follow. She was out there. Somewhere. Running.
Holly Mendoza lived on the east side of the city at the Chesterfield Apartments, smack in the middle of a quiet couple of blocks of warehouses and canneries sharing space with other apartment buildings. Red brick buildings dominated, trees lining the sidewalks.
Wolf entered the lobby. A dark-haired receptionist in a gray suit sat behind a desk. She spoke on the phone in a clipped, business-like tone. An orange-shaded computer monitor sat in front of her, but she had her eyes on a desk calendar instead. Wolf walked past her desk to the elevators and went up to the fourth floor.
He knocked on apartment 406. No answer. He knocked again, waited a moment, then went back downstairs.
The receptionist, off the phone now, looked up. Wolf asked if she knew if a tenant named Holly Mendoza was home.
She had no idea, she said.
Wolf produced Holly’s notebook. “When I was having breakfast this morning, I found this in my booth. It belongs to Miz Mendoza. There’s personal information and a large amount of money inside. I want to make sure she gets this back.”
“You can leave it here.”
“I’d rather put it in her hand personally. Do you have a work number? Somewhere I can reach her?”
“We can’t give out that information.”
From a door behind her, a man stepped out with a file folder in hand, his mouth open to say something. The man had a puffy face to match a roly-poly body wrapped in a suit that looked a little too tight, with an undone collar button and crooked tie. He stopped when he saw Wolf. “Can I help you?”
Wolf went through
the story again. The roly-poly man examined the notebook and noted the pictures inside. He confirmed that the woman in the photos was indeed Holly Mendoza, but they couldn’t bend the rules. Wolf produced his detective badge and the roly-poly man’s eyes lit up. Sure, they said, they’d be happy to help the officer. Why didn’t you say something before? The receptionist typed a few keys and read off Holly’s work number--a nightclub/restaurant called The Candy Apple--and emergency contact number, which belonged to her boyfriend. When Wolf asked the boyfriend’s name, the girl said, “Tim Dell.” Wolf kept his face straight as he finished scribbling.
He thanked them both and left the office.
The automatic doors at Wake County Hospital slipped open with a squeal. Wolf stepped through. The elevator rumbled up to the intensive care unit. Crew Cut, aka Kevin Morris, had been brought there. He stopped a passing nurse and asked where the shooting victim from the early morning was. She asked which shooting, there were four. From Mick’s Diner, Wolf said. She directed him to the turret-style desk from which several hallways branched off. Three young nurses sat behind the counter. The seats in the waiting area weren’t occupied.
Wolf had his badge out. One of the nurses extended a finger past his shoulder and said, “Room 504, detective.”
“How’d you know what I’d ask?”
“Other detectives have been in there about a half hour now,” she said.
Wolf kept his face steady, thanked her, turned and went down the indicated hallway. It would have been nice to chat with Crew Cut, but the last thing he needed was the punk pointing a finger and saying he was the one who blasted a hole in his leg. Wolf followed the tiled hallway past the closed door of 504, continued to the end, and pushed through the stairwell door.
Wolf found Crew Cut’s downtown address, a fading brownstone. The vestibule needed new paint on the peeling walls; a stray cat, in a corner, played with a flake of paint. Wolf turned down a darkened hallway to a door marked Super. Strange goo decorated the door. Wolf kicked a few times. The chain rattled and the door squeaked open. A tall thin man stuck his small head out.
“What?” he said.
Wolf flashed his badge. “Let me up to Kevin Morris’s room.”
“Who?”
“Kevin Morris. Tenant here.”
“Wait a sec.”
The thin man shut the door and returned carrying a ring of keys. His grease-stained T-shirt smelled like a double cheeseburger and spots of paint dotted his jeans. Wolf followed him back to the vestibule. The cat was now licking a paw. They started up the stairwell, a breeding ground for strange, putrid smells.
“Ever hear of light bulbs and Clorox?” Wolf said.
“Talk to the owner.”
“Your parents?”
“Just my mother.”
“You tell her to fix this place,” Wolf said, enjoying his role-playing, “or I’ll have the housing authority close you down.”
“There’s a hundred bucks waiting for you downstairs.”
“Is that a bribe?”
The thin man had no answer.
“Skinny guy like you wouldn’t last long in prison,” Wolf said. “Keep that in mind.”
The thin man opened a door on the third-floor landing. They went down a hallway to apartment 316. The thin man fumbled with the keys. “How long?”
“Open it.”
The thin man unlocked the door and stepped back without meeting Wolf’s eyes.
Wolf said, “Get lost.”
A short entryway led to a hallway. At one end a bedroom/bathroom, the other kitchen/living room. Frayed carpet; cracked walls. Wolf moved up and down the hall, checking each room. Not a stick of furniture.
Wolf stood in the center of the empty living room. He went down the stairs and reached the vestibule without a tumble, kicked on the super’s door again, told the thin man to lock up, and headed for the exit.
He stopped at a pay phone he found outside a liquor store, used a handkerchief to lift the receiver. He dropped a quarter in the slot.
And called the city housing authority.
Wolf decided to try talking to Morris at the hospital again, but his jaw tightened at the sight of a police car with flashing cherry lights blocking part of the entrance. When he reached Morris’s room, he stopped. Two uniformed police officers stood at the foot of the bed.
“Who are you?” the older of the two cops said. The stripes on his sleeve showed his rank as sergeant. Wolf flashed his detective ID.
“That was fast. We just called a few minutes ago.”
“I’m here on another call,” Wolf said, “heard there was some commotion, so I thought I’d take a look.”
The sergeant nodded. His younger partner stayed quiet. Muzak from the hall drifted into the room.
“Well, this guy’s dead,” the sergeant said, turning back to Morris. The sheet had been pulled up over his head. “A nurse found him.”
Wolf stepped up beside the bed, lifting the cold sheet. Morris didn’t look so tough anymore, his skin cold, face slack. Small puncture wound on his upper arm. A dark shade of red circled the wound.
Wolf said, “Gotta go upstairs. Room 720 if you need me.”
“Right,” the sergeant said, and Wolf slipped out.
Wolf returned to his car and did some thinking. Morris was important enough to silence and so was Holly Mendoza. That meant the gun runners hadn’t finished their business. Maybe more than guns were involved? He wondered if he stood a chance of finding the girl.
11
Holly Mendoza couldn’t be traced through her work just yet. The Candy Apple Club didn’t open until late evening. Temporary roadblock, one he had a good idea of how to get around.
He turned his attention back to Vince Palakis and the mystery of the stolen DVD. Wolf parked the Chrysler across from the man’s office building, watched Palakis get his lunch from the hot dog vendor, and followed him home after work. He spent the next few hours parked across the street from his home. The yellow Porsche remained in the driveway. Presently, a Mazda 6 pulled into the drive and a young man entered the house. Scott Palakis, the son.
Once evening arrived, Wolf eased out of the car and popped the trunk. He tied on a heavy tool belt loaded with gizmos and shimmied up the telephone pole in the middle of the cul-de-sac. His stomach fluttered at the height, so he didn’t look down.
He picked the lock in the junction box, examined the set of wires and connections, and pulled from the tool bag a portable phone unit and plugged it in. A process of elimination followed as he rang each line, asking for Vince Palakis.
Finally, “Hold on.” Younger voice. The son.
Another male voice said, “Yes?”
“Mister Palakis,” Wolf said, “you’re one of the lucky few who have been chosen--”
“Not interested.” Click.
Wolf smiled. Perfect. He tugged the Palakis line free of the mess of wires and detached the portable unit, dropping it back into the bag. He pulled a small remote transmitter from the bag and connected it to the box’s power outlet, then wired it into Palakis’s line. A light on the transmitter flashed when he pressed a small button on the side.
He climbed down and returned to the Chrysler and turned on a portable receiver. Some line buzz told him all was well, and he sat back to wait. He wanted a cigar. A guy just can’t sit in one place without something to smoke. The light jazz from the stereo made no impact on his thoughts. He wondered about approaching Palakis to see if he could worm his way into the man’s confidence but decided to avoid that plan. If what Wolf suspected about the hit-and-run really happened, no way would Palakis accept Wolf’s help. He’d have other resources at his disposal.
The receiver crackled as the line rang. “Hello?” Palakis the elder.
“It’s me.” A male. Wolf turned up the volume.
“Come over,” Palakis said. “My son is here for dinner. We can ask him what he knows.”
“Ten minutes,” the other man said. Click.
Wolf frowned. M
ore line buzz. Was the Palakis boy somehow involved in the robbery? Wolf propped his left elbow on the top of the door and rubbed his upper lip with his left index finger. That would explain not calling the cops if Palakis thought his own family had ripped him off.
The porch light snapped on. Wolf watched the front door open and the young man step out. Scott Palakis climbed into the Mazda and the flash of light from a streetlamp as he passed Wolf showed that the young man wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Wolf started his engine and followed. As he left the cul-de-sac, frantic dialing crackled over the receiver; when the other end picked up, the voice of the man who needed “ten minutes” answered.
Palakis said, “Scott’s gone. He got a call and split. Something about a meeting.”
Wolf followed the Mazda onto the avenue, blending with traffic.
“I see his car,” the other voice said, and Wolf glanced in his mirrors hoping for an idea of where the other man’s car was. “I’ll stay with him.”
“Don’t let them kill him,” Palakis said.
The line clicked. Palakis said, “Miles?” Another click.
Wolf followed the Mazda into downtown Las Palmas and Scott Palakis pulled into a public parking lot. Wolf eased the Chrysler into a curbside red zone. Scott crossed the street to a bar called Mother Goose and went inside. Wolf watched for any other cars parking nearby but saw none. Curbside parking was full, which left the lot across the street, other lots further down. Traffic streamed by. Wolf traded the red zone for a space near the Mazda and entered the bar.
A line of people sat at the bar and more occupied tables and booths with country music blaring from ceiling speakers. Scott and another man Wolf recognized sat in a back booth. Wolf passed the booth and ordered a beer at the bar. He glanced over his shoulder. The other man, older than Scott, his mouth in a frown, was Detective Harry Brock, Las Palmas Homicide. Wolf knew Brock from a few years back. The detective had asked Wolf to prove that the elder Palakis had killed his baby son.
