The Repairman- The Complete Box Set

by L. J. Martin

  When we enter the club the kid at the elevator puts a palm in my chest, stopping me. “Mr. Flannigan said to expect someone else. Who are you?”

  Only then do I remember I'm in disguise. I remove my bill cap letting my ears flatten and take the wig off with it, peel the eyebrows, then pop the inserts out of my cheeks. “Voila, I'm Mike Reardon.”

  “Jesus,” the former shore patrol squid says, his mouth slack for a moment. “You are Mike Reardon.”

  Pointer is red in the face, with teeth gritted, when we stride into his office. Flannigan's just behind his chair, leaning on the credenza, arms crossed, brows furrowed, looking equally unhappy. The two no-neck security guys who've escorted us up the elevator, Frick and Frack, flank the double doors just after a brunette, who's obviously taken beautiful Cindy's place, makes a fast-paced exit. Pax and I take a position in front of the big desk...and are not invited to sit. The two no-necks now look like Praetorian Guards right out of Ben Hur. They, too, have arms crossed.

  Pointer doesn't bother with hello. “Who did you guys piss off?”

  Pax and I look at each other then back at Pointer. Pax is a little speechless so I ask. “You think we pissed someone off and they snatched your secretary and daughter?”

  “Granddaughter. I got a phone call saying to call off the dogs and if I didn't Mona and Cindy would be dog meat. And, by the way, the caller said to put together five mil for the insult and he'll call back with delivery instructions.”

  “And we're the dirty dogs?” I ask, a little incredulously.

  “Who else?” Pointer asks between gritted teeth.

  “How the fuck would we know,” I snap back, feeling the heat creeping up my backbone. Then I add, “No one knows we're on the job except our computer people and your people. And two of the three of our people don't know who we're working for.”

  “Obviously someone knows,” Flannigan speaks for the first time. “Our people would never—”

  “Bullshit.” I snap at Flannigan. “You've got a couple of hundred or more employed here.”

  “Three hundred and forty-seven on three shifts.”

  “Okay, three forty-seven. Who's fucking who and how much pillow talk is going on and who's getting shitfaced and running off at the mouth? We have three people to worry about...only one really...and it's a damn sight easier to keep track of three than three hundred. But this is getting us nowhere. Let's find out where the ladies are and get them home.”

  Pointer slumps back in his chair and sighs deeply, then in a newfound quiet tone asks, “And just how the hell do we go about that?” The guy looks like he's about to break into tears.

  Before I can reply Rashad Al-Saud strides into the room. He's looking much stronger and more confident than the last time we saw him. “Weatherwax and Reardon, right?” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” I respond.

  He turns to his father-in-law. “Are we making any progress?” Getting a shake of the head he turns back to me. “And you two...you have any idea who's behind this?”

  “We've had one day to work this. We're just getting started.”

  “Alex thinks you might have pissed someone off?”

  “We've pissed off a half dozen someones but no one who knows anything about our working for Mr. Pointer, so this is something else.”

  “So we're shit out of luck?” Rashad says.

  I turn to Flannigan. “Any video cameras on the scene?”

  “It happened in the parking lot behind the theater, Texas Station 18, and we've got a guy out there now bribing the help to cough up some video.”

  Pax asks, “They wouldn't give it up to the cops?”

  Pointer is sounding stronger. “No cops. The phone call said they'd kill them both if they saw one cop car or one guy who looked undercover.”

  “When did this happen and when did they call?” I ask.

  Pointer gives me an extended palm. “You two are out of this. You've done enough if you're the cause—”

  “Mr. Pointer,” I interrupt, “we are on this and it's on us. No charge.”

  “The fuck you are,” Rashad says, louder than necessary.

  12

  Pointer looks completely confused and I'm sure it's an an uncommon look for the Chief Executive Officer and largest stockholder of the Majestic.

  “I don't know. I just...” He's stammering.

  “We'll handle—” Flannigan says, rising to his full six feet six and two hundred sixty or so pounds, but I interrupt him also.

  “Get the video, let me hear the call...you did record the call?”

  “We did,” he says.

  “Let them hear it,” Pointer says.

  Flannigan picks up a small palm-size recorder and hits play, Hey, asshole. We got your women. You put some heat on us and we want it off, so fire those fuckheads. And by the way, we want five million for our trouble. Hundreds is fine. We'll call back in an hour and tell you where to drop the green.

  “Is that the original recording?” Pax asks.

  “No,” Flannigan responds. “The original is in our control room.”

  “I want it sent to my office,” Pax says. “Do you use Dropbox for large files?”

  “We do.”

  “Get it in DropBox.” He grabs a business card out of his shirt pocket and makes a quick note on the back. “Share it with this address. My guy's an audio expert among other things. There's a sound in the background and he can probably identify it. It may be just an air conditioner or something like that, but it may not.”

  “Do it,” Pointer instructs. “They are due to call in fifteen minutes.”

  I clear my throat, and say with as much authority as I can muster, “You have to have proof of life before you deliver any dough.”

  “How...” Pointer asks.

  “Ask to speak to them both. In lieu of that ask a question of each of them that only they would know.”

  “Lina,” Rashad offers, “had a stuffed animal and after the bus and her loss it made Mona cry every time she looked at it. A koala bear she named Aussie. No one but Mona would know that.”

  “And Cindy,” I ask.

  This time it's pointer who responds. “She loves our Hawaiian chicken wings, has them at least twice a week for lunch. The chef, who worked in Hawaii, calls them haole beach bums. No one would likely know that but Cindy.”

  While we talk Pax is phoning Sol and filling him in on the audio file and stressing the immediacy of the problem.

  The door to Pointer's office swings open and in strides the same guy who handed us the fifty grand, I presume the manager of the cage. He's carrying a large cardboard box.

  “Boss, we only put together four mil two seventy-seven out of the cage and vaults. And it's hundreds and fifties.”

  “Thanks, Max, keep working on it. Don't clean out the tables quite yet,” Pointer says. And the officious man spins on his heel and leaves as quickly as he entered.

  Pointer addresses his question to both Flannigan and I. “Is this going to be a problem?” I glance in the box. “It's a pile of cash a foot and a half wide by a foot deep and over two feet long. If a trade is made for the girls and the box at the same time, these assholes aren't going to hang around and count.”

  “I agree,” Flannigan says. “But these guys will likely be too smart to give up the ladies in a direct trade.”

  “And,” I snap, “we'll be too smart to give up the dough without getting the girls.”

  “I'm not taking the chance,” Pointer says and walks to his trophy wall and swings aside a wart hog mount. Behind it is a wall safe and in moments he has it open and comes back with two handfuls of hundreds, each six inches thick, and drops them in the box. I happen to know that ten grand in hundreds is just over four tenths of an inch thick. So an inch is twenty-five grand. “That's only three hundred thousand plus or minus,” I say.

  Pointer looks at me with new respect. “I was going back for more.” And he does, returning with an equal amount.

  Pointer's desk phone rings
the same time as Pax's cell. Pax walks away and talks low enough that we can't hear.

  Pointer answers with a weak hello and listens for a moment, then asks, “I've got to know they're alive. Put them on the phone.” He listens for a couple of seconds, then shouts, “No, wait...” And looks sick.

  He jumps to his feet and, wringing his hands, walks to the window, then spins back and yells at me so hard spittle flies. “God damn you, Reardon. They're going to kill them both.” Then the turns to Flannigan. “Throw these worthless fuckers out.”

  Flannigan takes a step and I stop him with an extended hand and a hard look. “We'll leave. Good luck with the ladies. But you know as well as I do they want the money and are not killing anyone...at least not until they have the money.”

  As we pass through the double doors Pointer is shouting, “And you owe me fifty grand. Get it back here, today. And if my granddaughter dies, you'll die as well…die hard.”

  I restrain myself from giving him the middle finger over my shoulder. He's under a lot of stress.

  Frick and Frack accompany us to the elevator and are a little over aggressive in shouldering us inside.

  “Cool it, guys, or the boss’s elevator might get torn apart.”

  Frick takes umbrage at that. “Shut the fuck up and you'll get out of here in one piece.”

  As we head out, leaving Frick and Frack behind, it's dead dark and moonless…which could work to our advantage. I ask Pax, “Was that Sol on the phone?”

  “It was, and he made both jets and reciprocating engines in the background. I'll bet those guys weren't far from the theater where they snatched the ladies. North Las Vegas Air Park is a stone's throw from the place.”

  “How loud did he say?”

  “He thinks they were on the field or very close. “

  “Ask him to tap into every video system for a half mile around the theater.”

  “I already did.”

  “And into the Majestic's phones?”

  “He's there. You think I'm just a pretty face?”

  “That's the last thing I'd think. What's our next objective?”

  “No question,” Pax says, “we head for the airport and see if Sol comes up with a vehicle to look for.”

  As we climb in the van, I'm double happy we have it with us. “I've got almost every toy and weapon in our arsenal in the back. So, bring 'em on.”

  We're halfway to the airport when Pax's phone buzzes again. “You get something?” he answers. He turns to me. “A blue dodge van with a white stripe. He couldn't make the plate. And Pointer got another call. He's to go to the northeast corner of the airport, the corner of North Simmons and West Carey, where a guy on a motorcycle will be waiting one hundred yards inside the airport fence. He's to go alone, and he's to throw the bag full of dough over the fence and drive away.”

  “We'll be there at least fifteen minutes before they will. Jump on it. We'll need the time.”

  13

  I have Pax fetch my binocs out of the back and drop down down the compartment hidden in the headliner and load and check two Colt M4's. Then from another hidden compartment below the small hanging closet, he retrieves two Kevlar vests and loads them each with four extra thirty-round clips.

  North Las Vegas Air Park is a secondary field in Vegas far to the northwest of McCarren, the primary field that has thousands of travelers in and out every week. It's surrounded by North Rancho Drive, West Carey Avenue, North Simmons Street and West Cheyenne Avenue. Fixed base operators, various office structures including a tech center, Vision Air Lines, and various hangers are scattered around the field. And hundreds of aircraft, of course. The main entrance is off North Rancho and the corner where the drop is to be made is about as remote as any place surrounding the field. The other corner across from the field is a subdivision, typical three bedroom two bath family homes with gravel yards and palms and mesquite typical of desert dwellings.

  We cruise as slowly as possible, so we don't attract attention, down West Carey then turn left onto North Simmons. When we’re a quarter mile from the corner where the drop is to happen, I pull over and go to the back and dig into my gear, coming up with a pair of military helmets mounted with Armasight N-15 night vision binocs and good-for-five-miles normally hand-held radios.

  It's sketchy using night vision when the surrounding neighborhoods are pretty well lighted; the neighborhood opposite the drop site has streetlights and of course in the opposite direction are the various colored lights of the airstrips and taxiways.

  But almost immediately I spot what must have at one time been an active, but now dormant, OMNI directional navigation tower mounted on a small building, no more than thirty feet square. The twenty-five-foot tall bowling pin shaped apparatus on the top of the structure, the original OMNI tower, is still there and next to it a new higher radar tower with its twenty-foot saucer rotating. The building below is two hundred yards inside the corner and only a hundred yards from the southeast end of the smaller 30R airstrip. And next to the building is a dark van—can't tell if it's blue—with a white stripe. And next to it, a motorcycle. I flip a U-turn so we're up close to the eight-foot-high cyclone fence, four hundred yards from the corner and maybe three hundred from the building.

  As I exit the van and lean on the front, looking through the binocs, I yell back to Pax. “Let me study this while you go to work on the fence. Enough hole to get the Harley in, please. Small bolt cutters are in the tool bag.”

  “Why's this picture so familiar?” he yells back, but heads to the rear of the van and digs for the duffle bag full of tools.

  “What's familiar?” I yell, not taking my eyes off the van and building.

  “I'm in a three-grand Armani suit, two-hundred-buck shirt and hundred-buck silk tie…not to speak of the alligator loafers…doing the grunt work while you're in Wranglers, Vans, and a fifty-dollar sport coat sitting on your ass watching the world turn. You want me to make you a martini, bwana?”

  “This is my best sport coat, eighty bucks at Sears, I'll have you know. And I'm going to unload the bike as soon as you've got a hole, while you watch the bad guys.” I glance at my iPhone. “We've only got about eight minutes to the drop.” I drop the sport coat and grab a vest as I don't want to miss anything. And I fish out a couple of pairs of tight latex gloves. Not a good idea to leave prints, in case we can beat a trail out of here after accomplishing our task.

  And as I return my attention to the white van, I get the heat signature of someone exiting the building.

  I can hear the wire snapping as Pax works the cutters, then he yells, “You got a hole,” and I head for the rear. Not bothering to slip the ramps out from beneath the van, I hit the starter, and gun it, and the bike leaps through the rear doors like the thoroughbred she is.

  “Grab my M4,” I yell at him and, after spinning around and returning to the hole, I strap it over my shoulder. My Glock is at the center of my back, along with two additional magazines. “Move closer to the corner so you can see what's coming down.”

  He heads for the driver's seat and in seconds is pulling away, while I'm hitting the hole. He's cut the fence three feet across the bottom and six feet up the sides so as I hit it the flap lifts up. I have to duck my head and use my helmet as a ram, but get through, although the left side fence wire rips across my arm.

  I gun the bike forty yards out onto the airport grounds then slide to a stop and drop the night vision binocs down. The motorcycle has moved halfway to the corner and stopped.

  Moving my bike another hundred fifty yards until I get the building between myself and the guy who's making the pickup, I idle up to within twenty yards of the structure. The rotating radar dish is making enough noise, I hope, to cover the sound of my Harley. I kill it, dismount, unsling the M4 and make my way around the corner of the building. The door is slightly ajar.

  With one last glance at the pickup guy, who’s now moving forward to the corner where a black Lincoln is parked, I start to kick in the door…but it's being p
ulled open.

  I flatten against the concrete block building as a guy sticks his head out and, luckily, is intent on seeing what his buddy is doing…probably making sure he's not picking up the dough and heading for the hills.

  The skeleton frame of the M4 stock is not the best bludgeon, but I put plenty of shoulder behind it and take the guy right at the base of his skull. He goes down like a sack of shit, and I kick open the door.

  Another guy, Hispanic I think, as it's poorly lit inside the building, is coming up off a canvas camp chair. His eyes are wide and he's digging for a pistol tucked into his belt. This time the butt of the M4 takes him right at the bridge of his nose, and he windmills backward, then goes to his back, being tripped by two ladies who are prone on the cold concrete floor. Their ankles and arms are bound with cable ties, and duct tape covers eyes and mouth.

  Bad guy two is still digging for his pistol and about has it free of the belt so I have no choice, and double tap him, first to mid-chest and second to his forehead.

  Then, ignoring the women, I run back to the doorway and search for the guy who went after the dough. He's on his way back, but it looks as if he's seen my Harley and is alert for trouble. A duffle bag is strapped to the back of his bike, and he's riding hot, but with one hand free and holding a weapon.

  From forty yards or so, he cuts loose and I'm splattered with concrete block chunks as whatever he's firing slams into the wall beside the doorway. As I'm dropping back I see his arms fly up and he dives forward, but hits the handlebars on one side and the bike goes one way and he the other. He hits hard, rolls in the dust and weeds, and doesn't move.

  I glance down at the first guy who I cold conked, to make sure he's not recovering, and see he never will as one of his buddy's wild shots has taken out his throat and he's bled out, as already no more flows. Hard to hit what you want from a fast moving bike. And there's nothing worse than being taken out by friendly fire. But then again, I guess the dead don't judge what's good or bad.

  My radio crackles. “You okay?”