Breath of Hell (Harry Bauer Book 8)

by Blake Banner

  He hunched his shoulders and a big smile transformed his face. He wheezed a laugh and leaned back toward the office.

  “Hey, Hanna!” he said, laughing, “Mr. Brennan here just checked in, says he drove all the way from New York to get away from his wife’s talkin’!”

  He threw back his head, opened his mouth wide and for a second remained like that, in silence, before releasing a huge cackle. As he leaned forward and slapped his thigh, a woman who was maybe ten years younger than him appeared at the door. She had the dark eyes and complexion of a Mexican and was still handsome in her sixties. She regarded him with long-suffering amusement, then shook her head at me.

  “You couldn’t send your wife to Miami instead?”

  “So she could spend the advance before I’ve even written the book?”

  She came forward and took the ledger. “You’re writing a book?”

  “Trying to.”

  She nodded, but her big eyes said she didn’t believe me.

  “I don’t know how much peace and tranquility you gonna find around here, Mr. Brennan. You might have been better going up to Maine, like Jessica Fletcher. People round here think we are still in the Wild West. They never got the memo, you know?”

  “Well, I’ll give it a try for a few days and see how it goes. Any place I can get a meal around here at this hour?”

  She made a doubtful face. “You got the saloon across the road. They make burgers and steaks. The food is good, but the company is not so good, especially on Friday and Saturday night. A lot of noise, sometimes there are fights.” She pointed to the lounge. “We got a small dining room through there. Breakfast between eight and nine, lunch between twelve and two, dinner from seven till nine.” She shrugged. “Now the kitchen is all closed up.”

  “That’s OK. I’ll get something at the saloon. Thanks.”

  “Back before twelve, please, Mr. Brennan.”

  I carried my bags up to the bedroom, slung the kit bag under the bed and made my way down again. Mr. and Mrs. Jones had transferred to the lounge to watch a movie and I stepped out into the New Mexico night. There was a cold breeze that made me shudder as I crossed the road, but the saloon, as I pushed through the old wood and glass door, was warm and noisy. The air was heavy with smoke and the bar and most of the tables were occupied. I was surprised for a moment there were that many revelers in the town. Then I realized that most of them were wearing leathers. Those who were not bald had long hair, and just about all of them had some kind of beard. This was a biker gang.

  There were women, too, mostly young, mostly drunk. A few people turned and watched me walk to the bar, but on the whole they ignored me. The bartender was big, in his thirties, but he didn’t have the look of a biker. His eyebrows twitched at me, registering that he didn’t know me.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Beer. Is it too late for a burger?”

  “The works?”

  “Sure.”

  He walked to the end of the bar, opened a door and yelled in, “Burger, the works! Yeah fries, of course fries!”

  Then he came back and poured me a beer from the tap. As he handed it over he gave me a meaningful look. “You want the table in the corner?” He glanced over my shoulder at a corner of the room where there were less people. He shrugged. “It can get a bit noisy.”

  “Sure. Appreciate it.”

  I sat in the corner and sipped my beer, and while I did that I counted the guys in the bar. There were ten of them, though they were making enough noise for three times that number. Most of the talk seemed to be related to either sex, drugs and alcohol, feats of exceptional violence or bikes. I wondered where the bikes were, and figured there must be a parking lot in back.

  I had studied the file I’d taken from the brigadier’s office, and I’d had a good look at what photographs there were of Oz. I scanned the faces in the saloon and was satisfied he wasn’t there. Which meant he was somewhere else. And if he was somewhere else that meant he had to have a dozen more of his goons on hand. So he was either somewhere else in Hope, and these were his praetorian guard, or he had another twelve men as well as these.

  The burger arrived and I ate it staring at my phone like I was reading something. Meanwhile I focused on the noise and tried to filter out the irrelevant and see if I could pick up anything of interest. I didn’t—until I’d put the last piece of burger in my mouth and was preparing to drain my beer. Then I heard the word “Jones.”

  I put down my beer and picked up my phone again, and tried to zero in on the conversation. The voice was bordering on the hysterical, laughing and shouting.

  “They are crazy, man! How can anybody still, like, be like that? He’s so, like, ‘I’m a wise old country man, with glasses!’”

  I looked for the voice and found him standing beside a table, doing a stupid old man walk with an idiot expression on his face. There were three guys and two girls at the table who were helpless with laughter.

  The clown started talking again. “But the wife, man, she is old, like sixty or something, but I could so take her, man. I bet she was hot when she was a señorita.”

  There were shrieks from the girls and cries of “Man, you’re sick!” from the men. He ignored them.

  “But the real cutie is the daughter. Have any of you guys seen little Maggie?”

  Someone shouted, “Oh, yeah! Man, she is hot!”

  “I want Maggie for me!” The clown bellowed a Tarzan-like cry and beat his chest. “I’m tellin’ you. I am going to go over there and tell them, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I want your daughter’s hand…on my dick!’”

  This elicited hysterical laughter from everyone. I wondered how serious he was, or whether he was just mouthing off. In my experience that kind of asshole mouths off until he builds up enough of an obsession to do something about it. As I made my way to the bar to pay he was repeating:

  “I am going to do it, man! I swear, I am going to do it!”

  I paid and walked through the chill night back to the hotel. When I stepped through the door I found them sitting in the lounge watching TV. They nodded and smiled, then turned back to the TV. I hesitated, then stepped between the two potted palms.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, do you have a daughter called Maggie?”

  They exchanged glances. He answered, “Why would you ask a thing like that, Mr. Brennan?”

  I sat, facing them. “Because the bar I have just come from was full of,” I paused and took a deep breath, “what appeared to be members of a motorcycle gang.” I watched them exchange glances again. “They were very drunk, most of them, and they were making a lot of noise. But just before I left I heard one of them, he seemed to be the clown of the group, make a comment about ‘Jones.’”

  I saw Hanna’s hand go to her mouth, and her husband went a sickly gray color. He said, “What has that got to do with Maggie?”

  “Because this same clown said that the Joneses had a daughter called Maggie. I have to tell you that the way they spoke about you and her worried me. It made me worry for your safety.”

  Unconsciously they took each other’s hands. He appealed to me with his eyes.

  “What can we do? I’m almost eighty. Hanna is in her sixties. Maggie don’t live here. She’s over the border, in Texas.”

  “You should tell her to stay away until this gang leaves.”

  Hanna leaned forward. “We have told her, but they are not going to move. They have settled here. They live at a ranch north of Hope. We told Maggie, ‘Don’t come here any more!’ but she says, ‘I am not going to go and visit my mommy and daddy?’ She is headstrong. So she comes and she visits, and I am so scared for her.”

  “Have you talked to the sheriff?”

  Mr. Jones scoffed. “That no good piece of chicken shit? First day they showed up he shit his pants and hightailed it up to Vazquez. We ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since.”

  I nodded, trying to think. I was about to say something about contacting the state authorities in Alamogordio when t
here was a sudden noise out on the street, like a mob or a riot, but it was peppered with shrieks and laughter, and then drowned out by the roaring of a large number of big motorbike engines.

  I looked Hanna in the eye. “Hanna, I need you to do something. I need you and your husband to run up to my room.” I handed her the key. “My shoulder bag is on the bed. If you open it, at the bottom you will find a semiautomatic pistol. I need you to bring that down for me. I will meet you on the stairs. Then I need you and your husband to go upstairs and lock yourselves in my room. Understood?”

  They stared at me in horror for a moment. I said quietly, “We haven’t got a lot of time. If I am going to face those boys, I’d rather do it with a 9mm in my hand.”

  Hanna stood and snapped at her husband, “Come on, Bill, hurry!”

  They hurried up the stairs and I stood listening to the noise outside. There was a lot of shouting, and a lot of revving of a lot of bikes. Then suddenly a bunch of them, maybe half or more, took off into the night, leaving the rumble of maybe three or four bikes outside, along with the murmur of voices and occasional laughter. After a moment a voice behind me said, “Hey, Mr. Brennan!”

  I turned. It was Hanna, gingerly holding my Sig Sauer P226. I took it and as she hurried back up the stairs, I cocked it and slipped it into my waistband behind my back. Outside I heard some whoops and shouts, then the unmistakable voice of the clown screaming, “Hey Momma Jones, little Bobby’s comin’ to play with you!”

  I stepped out onto the porch and leaned against the wall at the top of the steps, looking down. There were four of them. They had their bikes parked across the street and they were walking toward the hotel. The clown was at the front, on his right side he had a guy with a red headband, long dark hair and a big moustache. On his left was a guy with a big gut and a big mess of blond hair and beard all over his head, and bringing up the rear was a bald buy with a goatee. They saw me and slowed as they approached the steps.

  I said, “Mrs. Jones is not available. You boys best go home and sleep it off.”

  The clown said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  And the bald guy behind him said, “He’s the guy who was eating a burger in the bar before. He was watchin’ you. I saw him.”

  I walked slowly down the steps till I was looking down into the clown’s face, less than three feet away. His maw was slightly open.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Bobby. I said, go away.”

  He leered, still with his mouth open, and I saw his hand go for the knife hanging from his belt.

  Punching from a neutral, standing position is not as hard as many people think. I bent my right knee, projected my right hip forward and drove a straight right pile into the side of his chin. I felt the joints of his jaw snap and his inarticulate scream tore the cold night in half. As he fell back into his pals I pulled the Sig from my belt and put a round through the hairy blond’s temple and waved the gun at the other two as the big slob sagged to the dust.

  “Back up. Hands in the air.” They backed up, eyes and mouths forming six perfect circles. When we were on level ground with no corpses between us, I said, “You were going to rape a woman tonight.”

  The bandana jabbered, “No, no, we was just foolin’ around…”

  The instep of my boot smashed into his groin, crushing his testicles. While he doubled up, whining, I shot the bald guy through the middle of his forehead. Then I shot the red bandana in the temple. As I turned to go back toward the hotel I saw Bill standing at the top of the steps with a double-barreled shotgun, staring at me. We stood like that for a moment till he said, “Sweet Jesus,” and after a moment, “Who in the hell are you?”

  I stepped up to the clown and stamped on the back of his neck with my heel. He stopped whining.

  “I told you. I’m a writer.”

  Click Here To Keep Reading

  Also by Blake Banner

  Up to date books can be found on my website: www.blakebanner.com

  COBRA THRILLER SERIES

  Dead of Night (Book 1)

  Dying Breath (Book 2)

  The Einstaat Brief (Book 3)

  Quantum Kill (Book 4)

  Immortal Hate (Book 5)

  The Silent Blade (Book 6)

  LA: Wild Justice (Book 7)

  Breath of Hell (Book 8)

  Invisible Evil (Book 9)

  DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES

  An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)

  Two Bare Arms (Book 2)

  Garden of the Damned (Book 3)

  Let Us Prey (Book 4)

  The Sins of the Father (Book 5)

  Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)

  The Heart to Kill (Book 7)

  Unnatural Murder (Book 8)

  Fire from Heaven (Book 9)

  To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)

  Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)

  The Butcher of Whitechapel (Book 12)

  Little Dead Riding Hood (Book 13)

  Trick or Treat (Book 14)

  Blood Into Win (Book 15)

  Jack In The Box (Book 16)

  The Fall Moon (Book 17)

  Blood In Babylon (Book 18)

  Death In Dexter (Book 19)

  Mustang Sally (Book 20)

  A Christmas Killing (Book 21)

  Mommy's Little Killer (Book 22)

  Bleed Out (Book 23)

  Dead and Buried (Book 24)

  In Hot Blood (Book 25)

  Fallen Angels (Book 26)

  Knife Edge (Book 27)

  Along Came A Spider (Book 28)

  Dead Cold Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (SAVE 33%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (SAVE 25%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (SAVE 25%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (SAVE 25%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #5: Books 17-20 (SAVE 25%)

  Dead Cold Box Set #6: Books 21-24 (SAVE 25%)

  THE OMEGA SERIES

  Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)

  Double Edged Blade (Book 2)

  The Storm (Book 3)

  The Hand of War (Book 4)

  A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)

  To Rule in Hell (Book 6)

  Kill: One (Book 7)

  Powder Burn (Book 8)

  Kill: Two (Book 9)

  Unleashed (Book 10)

  The Omicron Kill (Book 11)

  9mm Justice (Book 12)

  Kill: Four (Book 13)

  Death In Freedom (Book 14)

  Endgame (Book 15)

  Omega Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (SAVE 33%)

  Omega Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (SAVE 25%)

  Omega Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (SAVE 25%)

  Omega Box Set #4: Books 13-15 (SAVE 33%)

  * * *

  [1]

  See The Dead of Night

  [2] See The Silent Blade

  [3] See LA: Wild Justice

  [4] See LA: Wild Justice

  [5] See LA: Wild Justice

  [6] See LA: Wild Justice

  [7] See LA: Wild Justice

  [8] See Dying Breath

  [9] See Quantum Kill

  [10] See Silent Blade

  [11]

  See Breath of Hell