Wicked Break

by Jeff Shelby

  “Peter wasn’t into it?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Like I said, I don’t know Peter all that well. But I highly doubt he’s involved with white supremacists. He got visibly upset when he told me that Linc was into it.”

  It seemed like Linc had been keeping company with a pretty volatile group of friends and I wondered if it had become too much for him to handle.

  Mike looked over my shoulder. “And now, if you’re finished with me, my date for the evening has arrived.”

  I laughed and stood. “I said I wouldn’t get in the way.”

  “You are a friend.”

  “I try.”

  Mike stood up and waved. “Actually, I think you know her. We were all in court together one time, if memory serves me.”

  “Really?” I said, and turned around.

  The bar was crowded now, people stacked four deep at the railing. The tables in the restaurant were filled completely. Mike could’ve been waving at anyone in the place, trying to get the attention of any of the gorgeous women in the room.

  But it was clear that he was waving at the best-looking woman in the bar.

  He was waving at Liz.

  She froze for a moment when she spotted me, her expression indicating she was as surprised to see me as I was to see her. But then it was gone and she made her way over to us.

  Mike stepped around me. “Liz, you know Noah, right? His eyes were probably different last time you saw him.”

  She wore a blue blouse and tailored skirt, her hair piled on top of her head. The makeup around her eyes was a little darker than normal, the blue in her eyes a little brighter. She smiled nervously. “Yeah. Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” I looked at Mike. “I gotta run. I’ll call you, alright?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I pushed past them, through the crowd and out the front door, feeling as if I’d taken a beating all over again.

  Eleven

  I turned up Johnny Lang in the CD player, gripped the steering wheel of the Jeep, and stepped on the accelerator, driving away from the Columbia Street Brewery, Mike, and Liz as fast as I could.

  As I forced my way through the traffic headed north on I-5, I unclenched my jaw and tried to relax. Liz and I weren’t together. We weren’t anything. I didn’t have any right to get upset with what she was doing in her personal life, yet my gut felt like it was filled with jagged stones.

  I took the I-8 westbound exchange behind the old Sports Arena and past Sea World, exiting at West Mission Bay Drive, and headed into Mission Beach as I thought about my anger. I wasn’t ready to admit that Liz was over me. I’d imagined our relationship as one of those like you see on television, where the couple is apart until no one can take it any longer and then they end up back together. You just have that feeling that two people are supposed to be together.

  I had that feeling about Liz and me, but she apparently didn’t watch the same shows.

  I parked the Jeep in the alley outside my house and walked the five blocks up Mission to the SandDune. My legs were stiff and heavy and the walk helped bring them back to life. The bar was half filled; a quiet buzz of conversation mixed with the overhead television monitors.

  I slid onto the first stool and waved at Marsha behind the bar. She was wearing a tight black T-shirt cut just above her navel and her blond hair hung straight to her shoulders.

  She strolled over and winced. “Who danced on your face?”

  “Guy with big feet,” I said, leaning against the bar, breathing harder than I would’ve liked. “Shot of Cuervo and Red Trolley on the back.”

  She nodded and pulled the bottle of tequila from below the counter. She turned up a shot glass in front of me and filled it with the liquor.

  “Gonna be here awhile?” she asked, pushing the small glass toward me.

  “That’s my intent,” I said.

  She produced a bottle of the beer, flipped the top off, and set it next to the tequila. “Okay. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  I turned my attention to one of the monitors above the bar and watched the Padres play another meaningless game late in the year, trying to shut the image of Liz and Mike out of my thoughts.

  It was two beers and an hour later before Marsha wandered back to me.

  “You feel as bad as you look?” she asked, throwing her towel into a bin behind the counter.

  “Not until people start telling me how bad I look.”

  She laughed and nodded. “Right. Sorry.”

  “No problem. I’m getting used to it.”

  She leaned on the bar. “Guy was in here earlier, looking for you.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “Really?”

  “Yeah. About an hour before you rolled in.”

  Images of Lonnie and Mo fired through my head. I turned around and did a quick scan of the room. No one with a shaved head.

  I turned back to Marsha. “Get a name?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  I could feel the hair on my neck come to attention. “What did he look like?”

  “Black guy,” she said. “Maybe twenty or so. About your size. Lots of gold on him, wearing a Raiders jersey and a Dodgers cap.”

  I relaxed a little at her description, realizing it hadn’t been Lonnie or Mo. “Say what he wanted?”

  “No,” she said, pushing herself off the bar. “Came in, asked Marco if he knew you, Marco pointed him in my direction, I told him I hadn’t seen you today.”

  Her description reminded me of Deacon Moreno, the kid that Rolovich had complained about at the apartment complex. If it had been him, I wasn’t sure why he’d be looking for me, but I was immediately uncomfortable with the idea that he knew to find me at the SandDune.

  I stood up from the stool. “Thanks, Marsha.” I fished some money out of my pocket and slid it across the bar. “He comes back, give me a buzz, alright?”

  She scooped up the money. “No problem.”

  I walked out of the SandDune into the cool evening air. Mission Boulevard was heavy with traffic, cars crawling at a snail’s pace, but no one seeming to mind. The late summer tourists walked slowly down the street, pointing and smiling at nothing in particular.

  A Toyota Camry with a thumping bass coming from the interior broke out of the line of traffic and pulled to the curb in front of me.

  I stepped back and reached around my waist, touching the butt of my gun for reassurance.

  The passenger window dropped and the volume of the music went down with it. A kid, about eighteen, with skin the color of black licorice leaned out. He didn’t match the photo Rolovich had shown me.

  “Yo,” he said, exposing a gold tooth in the middle of his mouth. “How we get to Garnet?”

  I tried to glance around him, but couldn’t see the other face behind the wheel. “About two miles up to the north. Same direction you’re going.”

  He leaned on the window, a thick chain around his neck jangling against the inside of the door. “This way? You sure, dude?”

  “Yeah.”

  His tongue snaked out the corner of his mouth and he nodded slowly. “Cool.” He lifted his chin as a way of saying thanks, then leaned back in the car. He turned to the driver, said something, and then turned back to me. “Good thing we found you standing out here. Makes things easy, know what I’m saying?” He winked and the window and the volume of the music both went up.

  The wink didn’t fit as I watched the Camry pull away from the curb, back into the northbound traffic, my heart beating faster than I would’ve liked. I took a step forward, trying to get an eye on the receding license plate, when I saw the red Escalade coming on the southbound side of Mission.

  The back window on the driver’s side slid down and two gun barrels poked their heads out like a pair of twin cobras.

  The kid in the Camry had done his job and served me up on a platter.

  I dropped to the sidewalk, my already aching body taking another jolt, and hit the concrete, the first wave of bullets whistling abov
e my head. Tires squealed, people screamed, and glass shattered as the guns fired into the front window of the SandDune. I ignored the throbbing in my ribs and rolled to the curb, trying to avoid the falling glass and taking cover next to the parked cars on the street.

  The gunshots stopped as quickly as they’d started. An engine roared and as I moved to my knees and drew my gun, the Escalade tore down the middle of Mission and jerked left onto Mission Bay at the roller coaster, disappearing around the corner.

  It was quiet for a moment and then a cacophony of confusion and fearful voices filled the air.

  I looked in through the entrance of the SandDune. People were starting to stand back up inside, eyes wide with terror and shock. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it didn’t look like anyone was hurt. Marsha was on the phone, probably calling the police.

  I stood up awkwardly, my muscles screaming in pain and my gun hanging impotently in my right hand. I stepped back onto the sidewalk, pieces of the painted glass that had spelled out the bar’s name crunching beneath my shoes. Sirens wailed in the distance.

  I took a deep breath.

  I didn’t know where Linc Pluto was.

  I didn’t know who shot Rachel outside her apartment.

  I didn’t know why Lonnie and Mo had killed Peter Pluto.

  And I didn’t know who had just tracked me down in my own neighborhood and tried to ventilate my body with bullets.

  But as I stood there amid the gunsmoke, burnt rubber, and chaos, with my stomach in knots and my thoughts speeding through my brain on a conveyor belt, I did know one thing.

  It was time to go on the offensive.

  Twelve

  I spent an hour answering questions for a group of SDPD officers as they tried to clean up the chaos on Mission. I said I didn’t know if the shots were aimed at me. That was the truth. I assumed they were meant for me, but I didn’t know that for certain and I didn’t plan on spending the whole night explaining myself.

  Being shot at made me think about Rachel and I hadn’t been to the hospital yet to visit her. While I wasn’t enamored with visiting a hospital again so soon after being released, I wanted to get out of Mission Beach and I needed to talk to her.

  I made the drive to Sharp, my muscles stiffening up and throbbing after another long drive, reminding me that I wasn’t recovered yet. I needed one more good night’s sleep, but I wasn’t sure if I’d get it.

  I called the hospital on my way over, asked for Rachel’s room. She sounded tired when she answered, but told me she wouldn’t mind if I stopped by and gave me her room number.

  A lady at the information desk in the lobby directed me to the fifth floor and I found Rachel in her room, propped up in her bed, watching TV.

  She looked at me when I stuck my head in the doorway. “Hi.”

  I held up a hand and waved. The color was gone from her face. Her red hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. She looked small and weak.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “I’m okay, I guess.”

  I pointed at the chair next to the bed. “You mind?”

  “No. Go ahead.” She watched me sit down. “What happened to you?”

  “Got in a fight with the wrong guys,” I said, trying to find a comfortable position where my back didn’t feel like it was on fire.

  “Have you found Linc?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  She turned back to the TV. It was tuned to one of those home decorating shows that I tried to never watch.

  “So,” I said. “You’re going to be okay?”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Where did the bullet hit you?”

  She winced when I said bullet. “Just below my collarbone, I guess. They said it went out my back.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Unfortunately, it hit my collarbone,” she said. “It’s fractured.”

  That was going to make her uncomfortable for a while. “How long will you be here?”

  “A couple more days,” she said. “They wanna make sure there’s no infection and that it starts to heal okay.”

  “I’m sure it will.”

  She glanced at me. “Yeah.”

  We listened to the host of the show ramble on about colors.

  “What happened at your apartment, Rachel?” I asked.

  “I already told the police.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry to bring it up again. But can you tell me, too?”

  She sighed, kept her eyes on the show. “Someone knocked on the door. We thought maybe it was you again. I opened the door, but no one was there. I walked outside to see if anyone was around. I didn’t see anyone, so I guessed someone was just messing with us.” She went silent for a moment. “That’s when it happened.”

  “Did you see the gun?”

  She shook her head.

  “Any cars you recognized?”

  She shook her head again. “There were a bunch of cars on the street. I heard this big bang. Then I felt something hit me—hard. After that I don’t remember a whole lot other than being in pain.” She looked away—I could tell it wasn’t easy for her to talk about what had happened. She was still scared and still confused. And she had a right to be.

  “I told you I got in a fight,” I said. “It was with some other guys looking for Linc—skinheads, Rachel. Do you know anything about them? Or have you seen them around the apartments?”

  She wiped the tears off of her face and took a deep breath. “Skinheads? No. That doesn’t sound like Linc.” She sighed and turned back to the TV. “Does Linc have something to do with what happened to me?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” I started to feel guilty for coming. Her eyes were heavy with fatigue and I wasn’t helping. “Can I get you anything, Rachel?”

  She sighed again and her eyes fluttered. “Um…some more water, maybe?” She turned to the side. “There’s a pitcher, but it’s empty.”

  I grabbed the pitcher off the table and stood. “Be right back.”

  I walked down to the nurses’ station and had them refill the pitcher with water and ice. When I walked back into the room, Rachel was asleep.

  I set the pitcher back on the table, found the remote and switched off the television, and moved quietly out of the room, letting Rachel get the rest she needed.

  Thirteen

  After getting back from the hospital and a night of thinking more than sleeping, I woke to find Carter drying himself off out on the patio in the sunshine, his board on the concrete next to him.

  He shook his head and water sprayed from his hair like from a Labrador’s coat. His wet trunks dripped the ocean all over the ground.

  He plopped down into one of the chairs. “I’m getting old.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Little fourteen-year-old kid just put on a demo out there,” he said, motioning to the water. “Snapped the board like it was glued to his feet. Just ripped the ocean a new one. I looked like a robot out there compared to the little shit.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb. “Maybe I can help you recapture your youth.”

  He ran his hand over his face. “How’s that?”

  “Do some things that might get us in trouble.”

  His mood brightened. “Gimme five minutes.”

  Ten minutes later we were headed east on I-8 to the college area and Linc Pluto’s apartment complex.

  I told him about the shooting on Mission, but didn’t mention anything about seeing Mike and Liz. I had other things to worry about.

  “For sure they were aiming for you?” he asked, twisting in the passenger seat of my Jeep and adjusting the seat belt around his large frame.

  “Seemed like it. I was the only one standing there.”

  “The Camry is pretty standard stuff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He straightened up in the seat. “The young bangers do the setup while the older guys make the hit. Kid probably moved up a rung by getting you to stand still for the hitt
er.”

  I nodded, thinking he was right. Even if I had pegged the Camry immediately, about the only thing I could’ve done was scamper back into the bar, making me an even easier target if they’d chosen to come in.

  I took the southbound exchange to 805. “Really bothers me that they knew where to find me.”

  Carter shrugged his big shoulders. “Yeah, but come on. People know you down there. They know you’re a PI. Hell, you use that bar as much for an office as you do anything else.”

  “Still. Bunch of gang members stick out in South Mission. Anybody that knows me would’ve known they weren’t looking to hire me.”

  Carter nodded. “Probably. Bigger question, though, Noah, is why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why does some gang have you on their radar?”

  I’d been bouncing the same question around in my head and hadn’t arrived at an answer. The only connecting line I could draw to that was Linc’s possible relationship with Deacon Moreno. I wasn’t sure how I fit into that equation and the connection seemed shaky at best.

  As we pulled into Linc’s apartment complex, I hoped that something there might be able to offer some answers.

  The crime tape was gone from the front of Rachel and Dana’s apartment and the complex looked as quiet as when I’d arrived the first time.

  Carter leaned forward in his seat. “Jesus. What a dump.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Kid lives here, there wasn’t much in his trust fund.”

  “Or it was a convenient place to hide.”

  Carter turned to me. “From what?”

  I opened the door to get out. “Let’s see if we can find out.”

  I glanced around the parking lot and street, looking for anything out of place. I kept expecting to see Lonnie and Mo show up somewhere and I didn’t want to be surprised.

  Carter came up next to me. “What are you looking for?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Come on.”

  We walked to Linc Pluto’s door.