Wolf Who Walks Alone: A Raymond Wolf Mystery Novel

by Steve R. Yeager

  “But, you see, she still got away from you.” Montez drew a deep breath and sighed it out. “I’m just trying to help you here, pal. But you need to help us out too by telling the boss what he wants to know. Got that?”

  Vaughn racked a sob.

  Montez asked in his best gameshow voice, “Is that your… final answer?”

  Vaughn whimpered a few more pathetic sobs but did so as he slowly raised one hand. “It was—it was Rodney. He’s the one who screwed everything up. Not me. I’m sure of it. I took the blame because I thought I was supposed to take the blame. That’s how it works, right? But, I’ll tell you everything I can. Just, please… Don’t involve my family. Leave them out of it. They never need to know. Please…”

  Vaughn slid his hands out and set his cheek against the polished concrete floor. His face was red and swollen, and his eyes were wet with tears. He was mumbling something that sounded a little like a prayer. Good. Montez was okay with the man praying if that’s what he was indeed doing. Hell, he might even pray for the guy’s soul next time he went to church. He’d even go to confession once these matters were all wrapped up. That was a sure deal. A couple of Hail-Mary-Full-of-Graces, a fat donation, and all his sins would be wiped clean.

  He switched the phone off speaker mode and set it against his ear. “You get all that, sir?”

  “Ask him why he thinks it was Rodney.”

  “Our employer would like to know why Mr. Pinnock would let the girl go.”

  “He…” Vaughn started to say. “I don’t know. He…”

  Montez spoke into the phone. “Sir, a good beating doesn’t mean he’s spouting the truth. Not yet, anyway. Should I work him over a bit more and call you back?”

  There was a pause, static on the phone. Montez filled the silence in his head, wondering if he should have apologized for calling the boss too soon.

  “No, I have all that I need to move forward. You may proceed without him.”

  The voice on the other end of the line sounded a bit troubled, causing Montez to hold the handset away from his ear while rolling his lips between his teeth in contemplation. Whatever the case, the boss had given him an order before he had started in on Vaughn, so he intended to see it through to the end.

  “Actions have been set in motion, Mr. Montez, so I’ll need you to get to Mr. Vaughn’s contact, this Rodney Pinnock, and personally take responsibility for the operation as quickly as you can do so.”

  “You absolutely sure, sir? I could take this to the next level. The guy has a daughter we could use. We just—”

  “Mr. Montez, you have not yet earned the right to question me, understood?”

  Ouch. “No, I mean…okay, sir. It will be done just like you asked for and we will be on our way shortly.”

  He took another breath. “How about his family, sir? What should be done about them?”

  There was no answer. Montez pulled the phone away from his head and looked at the screen. The call had dropped. For a brief second, he contemplated calling his employer back and checking just to be sure. Then he shuddered, thinking better of it. The last thing I need is a bullet in my back. Nope, can’t have that.

  He tucked the newly acquired smartphone inside his jacket pocket. He had a plane to Denver that he needed to catch, and the thought of going through all that airport security bullshit weighed heavily on his mind. Getting a gun through security now was a real bitch thanks to those goddamned towel-heads. But he knew a guy, and that guy could make it happen for a Benji or two.

  Vaughn asked, “What did he say about my wife, my daughter? He’s not going to hurt them, is he?”

  “Boss said I should keep a close eye on them.”

  Vaughn lifted his head and kept shaking it while he spoke. “And what does that mean? No, I told you what you wanted to know. I told him. I promised I’d handle it all and get it done. It was Rodney that screwed this up, I swear it. It wasn’t me. But, I can fix it. I can. He’s got a line on another girl. She’s clean. No background. The other was too hot. Too much trouble. But she was taken care of, I swear it. Really. Just leave my family out of this. Please. Please, I’ll get it done right this time.”

  Montez groaned. “You know, pal, part of your problem is that you talk too much and say too little.”

  Vaughn blubbered a sob while Montez twisted his fist in his open palm, massaging the knuckles he’d bruised doing all that punching. Strikes against the human head were much like hitting a block of solid granite. And Montez didn’t like punching solid blocks of granite unless he really, really had to.

  Vaughn mumbled, “But he gave me two days. I swear it. Call him back. Please.”

  Montez was growing even more tired of the childish complaints. If he were ever in the same position, he’d face it like a man. Better yet, he’d have smelled the bad shit coming from a mile away and cut and run before it got to this point. Best not to delude one’s self. When it’s over, it’s over.

  He backpedaled a few steps behind the prostrated man, his leather heels scraping against the concrete floor as he walked first away and then toward the guy. He stopped pacing.

  “Mr. Vaughn. I’m afraid our employer has all the information he deems necessary for our arrangement. I think he was very disappointed with your answers. Extremely disappointed, as am I, you know? It was a mistake to have visited him today because he knows all. He sees all. You should have grabbed your family and run for the hills at the first sign of trouble.”

  “But—” Vaughn pleaded. “Rodney was the one who screwed this up. Not me.”

  Montez didn’t believe a goddamned word of it. “I know that guy Rodney. He doesn’t have the balls to let a girl go. Not if he wanted to keep those balls.”

  Vaughn said nothing. He’d been caught in a lie, and Montez knew it. There was no squirming out of it.

  “You really disappoint me, you know that?” Montez said. “I thought you were a better man than this. Guess not.”

  He glanced at his partner and nodded once. The kid did nothing. Widening his eyes, Montez whispered from the side of his mouth to the kid, “Do it.” And then he demonstrated just what he wanted done using his index finger to pantomime the action.

  The kid lowered the barrel of the 9-millimeter SIG closer to Vaughn’s head, aiming it just above the shiny bald spot on the back. Up close, it made for a nice fat target. The younger man narrowed his eyes as Montez backed away about five steps, watching the kid closely.

  Vaughn sobbed, long and sorrowful. “No, please. I can fix this. We can fix this. You don’t have to do this. There’s more that I didn’t tell you. I swear it. There is more…”

  The gun wavered and tracked the back of his head. The hand holding the gun shook, and the kid widened his eyes as he looked back at Montez, seeking a reprieve.

  Fat chance.

  Montez shook his head no. There wasn’t anything else Vaughn could tell him that he didn’t already know.

  The kid squinted his eyes to narrow slits and squeezed the trigger. A sudden hard pop filled the warehouse, echoing back from the far walls before dying into silence.

  Montez looked at the kid and grinned wide. He could smell the cordite and the coppery blood and the clean, soapy scent of fresh brains. He stuck a finger in one ear to clear the slight ringing from the loud clap of the report and glanced down at the corpse and back at the kid once more.

  He chuckled. Right, again.

  The kid frowned back and then scrunched his face up tight and started wiping away the splattered blood and brains that had splashed all over his cheap, off-the-rack suit.

  - 5 -

  TWO CHEESEBURGERS, TWO ORDERS OF FRIES

  WOLF SAT IN silence as the girl across the white Formica tabletop flashed a half-smile and twisted a lock of auburn hair over one ear. She was brimming with a misplaced confidence—a front, he knew. It was a game she thought she was playing with him, but he could see through it like the clearest pane of glass.

  Still smiling, she tugged at one of the two red basket
s with the checkered waxed paper inside and dragged it to the middle of the table, balancing it on edge over the imaginary dividing line between his side and hers, and then testing the ownership of it by plucking out a single fry and popping it in her mouth.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I’m literally starving.”

  He said nothing.

  “And stolen fries taste the best…”

  He watched her for a beat. “You are a little young to be traveling all on your own.”

  “You know,” she said, quickly taking another french fry, “it’s not right to talk to strangers, now, don’t you? Lecturing them is even worse.”

  When he said nothing, she grinned, popped the fry in her mouth, and chewed greedily.

  “But it is okay to steal from them?”

  “This is stealing?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Presumptuous?” She pronounced the word slowly, as if she were almost tasting it. “You were going to give them to me anyway, right?”

  “What is your name?”

  She stopped chewing and swallowed. Her hand went to her mouth. “Melody.”

  He let the obvious lie pass unchallenged, leaned back in his seat, set his palms on the table edge, and curled his fingers over the top. “Would you like to order something on your own, or are you content with taking what is mine?”

  She glanced at the basket and back at him. “I’m good,” she said dismissively. “Who are you waiting for?”

  “What makes you think I’m waiting for someone?”

  “You’re not? Then whose burger is this?”

  “It is mine.”

  “Two baskets? Two burgers? Two orders of fries?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whew, I thought your girlfriend was in the restroom or something bad like that. Figured she’d be pissed as hell if she came back and found me sitting here all alone with you.”

  “And why would you think that?”

  “Is everything you ask a question?” She shut her mouth and shook her head. “Scratch that.” She leaned forward. “You see, I figured that, since both of the baskets were closest to you, and, if you were here with someone else, and they had already started eating, then this basket would have been on my side of the table, right? So, then, I figured you’d just gotten your order and were waiting for someone else to come join you.”

  He said nothing.

  She tilted her head to one side. “See, a big guy who looks like you? I figured it was your girlfriend, or, something like that. Or, maybe it’s your boyfriend?” She shook her head again and shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, man. I don’t care. I believe in all that equal rights stuff.”

  When he did not reply, she pulled the red basket she’d been stealing fries from all the way to her side of the table, claiming it as her own. She grabbed the ketchup bottle from the rack and shook out a red pool on the waxed paper, then grabbed the salt from the chrome rack and shook it all over the fries and finally added a few dashes of pepper. “I love pepper on my fries. How about you?”

  When he still did not answer, she continued. “So, what’s your name? Guy like you has got to have an interesting name. Probably terrifying. You gonna tell me?”

  He had nothing to lose or gain by doing so. “Wolf,” he said flatly.

  “That’s a name, all right. Doesn’t really scare me, though. Big, bad, Wolf. As in, who’s afraid of…? But I can see how it fits you now. That your first or last name?”

  “Last.”

  “Last, huh? You got a first name?”

  “Raymond.”

  “Raymond…Wolf.” She let the name roll off her pierced tongue. “It sounds like your mom musta named you. I knew a Ray once, but not a Raymond. Or, maybe he was a Raymond and we’d just been calling him Ray all his life? Weird, huh? He wasn’t quite so—” She waved a french fry at him. “—friggin’ huge.”

  “You find it wise to sit and talk so openly with a stranger?”

  “I’m eating your food, aren’t I? And you haven’t kicked me out of here yet, so that doesn’t make me a stranger now, does it?”

  She showed her palms and wiggled her fingers. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But, really, I was starving.” She grabbed a pair of fries and shook them both at him in tandem. “You, now. There’s just something about you, mister. Yeah, you may be really big and all, but I’m a pretty good judge of character, and you look like someone I don’t have to be afraid of.”

  “Is that so?”

  She grinned. “Am I right? It’s those icy blue eyes. Don’t know many guys like you with eyes like that who are all that bad.”

  He narrowed those eyes. “You are very judgmental for someone so young.”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  He raised one eyebrow.

  “Yeah, I really am.” She glanced down at her stolen basket of fries and cheeseburger. “You know these greasy things will kill you, right?”

  She examined the cheeseburger and then took a big bite out of it. Meat juices dribbled down the corners of her mouth, and she leaned forward and let those juices fall onto the tabletop where they made tiny brown spatters. When she finished chewing and swallowing the huge bite, she took another bite, then another, and finally set the half-eaten burger back into the basket and rubbed her juice-slicked fingertips together on a paper napkin—and gave one last swallow.

  He drew a breath. “What sort of trouble are you in?”

  “What makes you think I’m in trouble? I’m not, but thanks for asking.”

  “Really? There is a guy over there watching you very closely.”

  She started to turn and look but stopped herself. “Yeah, that creepazoid has been following me for hours.” She shrugged. “I can take care of myself.” She picked up the cheeseburger and put it back down in the plastic basket without taking another bite.

  He held her gaze. “You think you can take care of yourself all on your own?”

  She nodded. “You say it like you don’t believe it.”

  He considered for a second. He knew her story was bogus. She was looking to use him to scare the other guy off. That was it. He was nothing more than that to her. A golem. A monster. But he had nowhere better to be, so it really didn’t matter.

  He licked his lips and leaned back in his seat. The vinyl squeaked. “May I tell you a story my grandmother once told me?”

  Her cheeks sucked in as she thought about it. “Okay, I guess so. Kinda abrupt. But you are sharing your food so…yeah, go ahead.”

  He sucked air, inflating his chest and began a tale he had once been told by his maternal grandmother. It seemed appropriate for the moment.

  “Once there was a bear who invited a rabbit to dine with him.”

  She held up a hand. “Is this one of those dumb Disney stories? I hate those things. They are so not real.”

  “The rabbit,” he continued, “came to eat with the bear, but the bear had only beans to eat and no fat in which to cook them.”

  She cocked her head and smirked.

  He kept his eyes fixed on hers and waited until that smirk disappeared. “Since the bear had no fat in which to cook the beans, he took out a knife and cut a slit in his side to carve out a piece of his own fat.”

  She chuckled nervously. “That’s not much of a story.”

  He ignored the comment. “Days after the rabbit dined with the bear, the rabbit wanted to repay the kindness, so he invited the bear to dine with him. The rabbit also found himself with only beans to eat and no fat in which to cook them.”

  “Beans and fat? Sounds like an awful meal to me. Who would—?”

  “So the rabbit, thinking he was smart like the bear, took out a knife and stabbed himself in the gut.” He mimicked the action, drawing an imaginary knife blade across his stomach. Then he tapped the side of his head. “And see, the rabbit thought he was being smart, like the bear.”

  She snorted. “Didn’t go so well for him, did it?”

  “No, it did not. The rabbit began to gus
h blood all over his home and nearly died from the wound. But the bear was again smart, and his quick actions saved the rabbit from a certain death. He stitched the poor rabbit’s wound closed and saved its life.”

  “Still not much of a story.”

  “Then you are not as smart as you think you are.”

  She did not say anything for several seconds. Then the left corner of her mouth ticked up and she nodded. “Okay, strange story, but I think I get it. The bear was big and the rabbit was small. What would hurt the rabbit would not hurt the bear. That’s the point you are trying to make, right?”

  He nodded once.

  She raised her hands in surrender. “Okay. Yeah, I’m worried about that creep. Yeah, he’s following me. But I can take care of myself, okay? Just let me sit here a bit longer.”

  “I will if you tell me who that guy is.”

  “Like I said, he’s just some scuzzball that’s been watching me since I got on the bus. Probably some perv who wants in my pants. But I can handle him. I know what I’m doing.”

  He had been observing her carefully the entire time during their conversation. It wasn’t hard to pick out her real story. She wasn’t stupid, but she was ignorant. She had come from a privileged background and been raised and sheltered for most of her life, which left her worldview dangerously incomplete. What she was presenting now was only an act, as he’d first suspected. It was a decent one, but it was still an act—one that would fold up quickly if she ever got herself in real danger.

  He flattened both hands on the tabletop. “What is it you are running from?”

  The question seemed to stump her. She said nothing for several seconds, then, “That’s none of your goddamned business.”

  He lifted his fingers from the table slowly, one by one, and reached across and pulled the stolen red basket with the checkered waxed paper and the pool of red ketchup back to his side of the imaginary line between them, reclaiming it as his own.

  “Hey!” she said.

  “Now tell me.”

  “I’m not telling some random stranger my business.”