False Ransom (Mike Chance series Book 1)

by Ivan Infante

  “Is that what Tino said?” Mike didn’t care either way, but he could tell this guy was a liar.

  “Yeah, that’s what he said.” With that, smarty guy tipped his hat and walked away. His partner followed a little too close behind him.

  “That’s it?” Mike called after them.

  “That’s it.” Smart guy threw his answer over his shoulder without looking back. Then the two men turned into one of the access tunnels and disappeared into the station.

  Mike lit a cigarette and took another slower look around the platform. Two beggars had arrived and set themselves up by the door leading off the platform. Everyone who got off the train would have to walk right by them. Mike wondered how hard they had fought for such a prime position. When he passed them on his way back inside, he didn’t give them a cent.

  In the lobby, Mike noticed that the sleeping soldiers were gone. There was no trace of Tino’s boys either. Glare from the sun spilled in through the big front door, Mike squinted into it. He could make out Benny’s car idling right in front. Mike turned away from the entrance and strolled casually up to the counter.

  The clerk behind it carried his job like a heavy load. He took a long look at Mike without saying a word. Mike could tell right away this guy was small. Not physically, he was ordinary in size, but petty of character. The type who used circumstances to make himself feel bigger. These guys were hard to hustle. Their sense of value was skewed to grudges and spites.

  Mike felt the urge to draw his weapon and shoot the clerk on principle, but he shook off that feeling. Mike had decided a long time ago that ending guys like this was doing them a favor. Let this chump waste his days licking his thumb and fiddling with tickets. To kill him was to do him a favor and Mike didn’t do favors.

  “Excuse me.” Mike tried to muster a normal smile. It went over like sour milk.

  “Can I help you?” The clerk didn’t mean it.

  “You know the kid that normally works nights?” Mike kept smiling. It made his cheeks hurt.

  “I know him. I hate the bastard. He didn’t show up and now I have to work a double.” The clerk’s tone gave Mike his angle. The creep could be bought with sympathy. Mike could fake that cheap.

  “Did he even call in or leave word?” Mike sneered and shook his head. He made it clear that he also thought the night clerk was a bastard.

  The clerk got wound up. He kept complaining. “No, he didn’t call. He didn’t leave word.”

  “Well, maybe we can help each other out?” Mike took out his cigarettes. “You have his address back there somewhere?”

  “Sure.” The clerk’s eyes narrowed a little. “What’s in it for me?”

  Mike lowered his voice so the clerk had to lean in to hear him. “Thing is, I need to see him too. Why don’t you let me know where he lives and I’ll go by his place and talk to him about my business and let him know he’s putting you out?” Mike punctuated his sentence with the offer of a cigarette. The clerk took it. That sealed the deal.

  “He doesn’t live far from the station. You could walk there.” The clerk got a pencil and pad from under the counter. He wrote an address down and slid the note to Mike. “Make sure you tell him you got it from me.” His eyes glinted.

  “Sure thing, pal.” Mike nodded his thanks, turned away and headed out the door. Outside, Mike slid into the passenger seat and handed Benny the address. Benny hit the gas and they were gone before Mike’s eyes had time to adjust to the brightness outside.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The clerk was right. The kid didn’t live far from the train station. Benny pushed the sedan hard through traffic and they were there in moments. The place was on Los Angeles Street. A wooden apartment building built up the side of the hill. Mike pointed it out as they passed. Benny nodded. He swung the Willys around and backed it into an alley across the street. They sat facing the building.

  Mike opened the door to get out, but before he could a big black Zephyr came out of nowhere and skidded to a halt in front of the apartment building. Smoke from burning rubber obscured their view for a second.

  Benny reached over and stopped Mike from getting out when he saw the car. Mike started to pull away, then changed his mind. Instead, he sat like Benny – low in his seat with his gun in his lap. They waited.

  It didn’t take long for things to get interesting. A couple of clean-cut operators in cheap tight-fitting suits stormed out of the building. They had the girl between them and they were half-dragging, half-carrying her down the steps. Mike could tell they were cops or maybe even G-men. The girl didn’t care who they were. She fought hard. She had blood all over her, too much for it to be her own. Someone somewhere had lost a hell of a lot of blood.

  The men handled her all the way down the steps and tossed her in the backseat. As soon as they had her packed away, a tall bald man in a much nicer cut of silk suit appeared at the top of the stairs carrying a small black valise. He paused and scanned the street. His eyes passed over them without stopping. They breathed a sigh of relief.

  After his quick look, the bald man trotted down the steps and got into the front passenger seat of the Zephyr. When he shut the door, the V-12 roared to life. The sedan sped away from the building and took a hard right at the first turn. The tires squealed and burned more rubber.

  “Follow them.” Mike said the words a second too late.

  Benny had already hit the gas and pulled out of the alley. He sped up and slid in behind the Zephyr, but he had to work hard to keep up. He looked over at Mike with a wry half-grin, “That guy’s hell on those tires. You think he pays for them himself.”

  “You think Uncle Sam?” Mike gripped the Savage and rested his arm on top of his door.

  “Federal agents dress better. These boys are probably with the city or the D.A. I mean this town is full of dirty cop squads and sledgehammer boys. That’s the look to me.” Benny answered with authority. Mike took his word for it. This was Benny’s town after all. Mike had just got here.

  The Zephyr turned off Los Angeles Street and onto 7th. Benny hung with them as best he could, but the high rate of speed made it difficult to be discreet. When the sedan turned right on Olive Street and headed past Pershing Square, the traffic thinned out even more. By the time the Zephyr took a left on Washington and headed past Wrigley Field, Mike and Benny were obvious and the men in the Zephyr took notice.

  The Zephyr skidded to a halt in front of the ball park. Benny did the same. Both cars idled in the middle of the street. Benny and Mike were about a hundred yards behind their quarry. It was a quiet and the neighborhood was deserted. The only noise was the rumble of the two big engines. After a couple of seconds, the Zephyr’s back doors opened. Two men got out, one on each side. They carried Tommy guns.

  “We might want to get out of here.” Benny slumped down low in his seat.

  “Go, go, go.” Mike stayed calm.

  Before they had gone ten feet, the shooters opened up. The bullets came fast. Sparks flew as lead ricocheted off the hood. The windshield shattered. Benny put it in reverse and hit the gas. He drove blind. His head ducked low. Mike got lower still. He was more on the floorboard than in his seat.

  Without looking, Benny did a 180 and spun the car around to put the gunmen behind them. The bullets kept coming. They tore into the back of the Willys. Benny swerved from one side of Washington to the other until he got to Main street. At the intersection, he took a hard right.

  The gunfire stopped the moment he turned, but Benny didn’t slow down. He kept up the high speeds for several more blocks. Then he saw a garage. He braked hard and skidded up into it. He drove to the back and parked in the shadows far from the street.

  They sat in the dark for a while and stared out the shattered front windshield and the bullet riddled hood. Benny broke the silence with laughter. Mike watched him for a while before he joined in. Mike didn’t know what was funny, but he could fake it. They laughed for several minutes until Benny got himself under control. Then Benny got out a sm
oke and lit it. Mike stole it from between his lips. Benny lit another.

  “Now, what?” Benny asked through his last few chuckles.

  “We go back to the apartment. Maybe they didn’t kill him.” Mike sounded like he didn’t believe what he was saying.

  Benny had an opinion. He stated it without doubt. “That kid’s dead. It was his blood everywhere. The girl didn’t have a scratch on her.

  “We gotta be sure. If he’s alive, we can get the names of those cops or maybe they left something behind…could be they didn’t get all the money.” Mike said.

  “They didn’t leave a cent of that money behind.” Benny knew Mike wouldn’t let it go even if Benny was in the mood to try and stop him.

  They sat in silence for a while and smoked their cigarettes down to stubs. They tossed their butts out the window at the same time. Benny started the car and they pulled out of the garage headed back toward the apartment.

  When they got back to the building, Benny pulled up right in front. He didn’t have any energy left for discretion. Mike didn’t either. He hopped out and rushed up the steps into the building.

  “I’ll wait right here.” Benny called after him. His knuckles were white from the grip he had on the wheel.

  “I’ll be right back.” Mike disappeared into the dark alcove that hid the front door.

  The entrance was broken. The wood around the lock gouged and broken. Mike pushed the door open narrow and slid inside. He shut it carefully behind him, stood still and listened. He could hear a radio somewhere deep in the building. Mike strained to make out the details. He could tell it was a show from an East coast ballroom, something with an orchestra. He heard a smart guy come on the air and start pattering away about the bands coming up next. Mike couldn’t make out the names.

  Mike walked to a cracked-glass directory that hung askew on the wall. He scanned it for apartment numbers and the names next to them. It took him a half a second to find the one he wanted. It was upstairs. He crept to the staircase, but hesitated at the bottom steps for a second to get his bearings. Another band played on the distant radio. Mike listened and tried to place the tune, but he couldn’t. After a second, he gave up and headed up the stairs.

  Mike stayed on his toes. The second floor was dim, but not dark. As he got closer to the top, he heard kids playing. He hated kids. If one came down the stairs toward him, he would trip the little bastard and send him tumbling.

  The music faded as he got to the top of the steps. It died under the rising laughter of children. Mike stepped out onto the landing as a couple of filthy young boys ran out from a dark hallway and headed right for him. Before he could react and trip them up, they jumped past him and flew all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. Mike wanted to smack both of them, but he pushed those feelings down and kept moving.

  He headed down the hallway. It was dusty and the paint peeled off the walls in strips. Every few feet there was another apartment. The front doors were flimsy and narrow. At the end of the hall, one of the door hung off its hinges. Mike stopped and pulled the Savage. He used the barrel to push the door open. Before he stepped inside, he looked back over his shoulder. The kids from the stairwell had snuck up on him. They stood there staring.

  The littler, dirtier kid spoke first. “Are you looking for the other fellas?”

  The second kid elbowed his friend hard. “He’s not looking for them. He ain’t one of them. You ain’t no cop are you, mister? You waited for them to leave before coming in. Didn’t ya?” The kid had his thumbs buried deep down in his waistband.

  Mike ignored the question. “I’m looking for a kid that clerked down at the train station. He lives here, right?”

  The first kid shifted from one foot to the other. “He’s in there, but I’m pretty sure he ain’t livin’. It was real loud in there before those cops dragged that girl out, now it’s awful quiet.”

  “That girl sure was pretty.” The second kid said.

  “She sure was.” The first kid nodded in agreement.

  “Shove off.” Mike waved them off and went inside. The kids didn’t budge.

  Mike stepped over the threshold and the first thing he saw was blood. It was everywhere and it flowed from the bed. From the door, he couldn’t tell for sure if the mess on the bed was human. He walked over to get a closer look. Close up, he could tell it was a kid. He could only guess which one. The kid had been torn to shreds and his skull had been bashed in.

  Mike didn’t look at the corpse for long. He’d seen plenty of them. Instead he stepped away from the body and searched for a clue as to what the hell had happened. It didn’t take him long to figure it. The clerk had been a weak sister. Mike could tell by the sparseness of the apartment and the shoddy nature of the furniture scattered around it.

  The girl probably looked like an angel from heaven to a kid like this. Once she’d come his way, he had never had a chance. He had probably thought the fake kidnapping was a bad idea. Mike was sure that the girl had talked the clerk into it. He had probably agreed reluctantly and then it all came unraveled. The clerk may have been weak, but he’d been right. This thing had been a bad idea for him. For the girl, it was too soon to figure.

  Mike found some thick ropes under a chair angled to face the bed. The men who took the kid apart had made the girl watch. If she had liked the kid at all, she was bearing a heavy burden. Most normal people couldn’t watch something like that and stay even. At least, that’s what Mike thought, but he was only guessing. He’d seen things like that himself and it hadn’t bothered him at all.

  Mike turned his focus back onto money. He searched the room for it from top to bottom. He found nothing. After a few minutes, he figured it was time to go and he stepped toward the door, but something caught his eye. A matchbook lay on the wood floor half-under a dresser. It was open with the white inside part face up. Mike could tell the number 50 was written on it. He bent down and grabbed it and looked at the front. The words SUNSET ROOM were written on a red background in thin black cursive. Mike shoved the matches in his pocket and headed out of the apartment.

  Benny was where Mike left him, but now he was behind the wheel of a Buick 8 Special. Mike liked the car. It was black and it was better than driving around in a bullet riddled Ford that might be on a police check list.

  Mike jogged down the steps. Benny swung the passenger door open and Mike hopped in without missing a beat. Benny hit the accelerator, took a hard right turn at the first corner and got them out of there. Neither of them said a word for a block or two until Benny took a swerving left onto Los Angeles street. When the car slowed to a normal speed, it was Benny that broke the silence.

  “What was it like in there? The kid alive? You talk to him?” Benny asked like he knew the answer.

  “No, he was long gone by the time I got there.” Mike decided before he got in the car that he would leave out the details. Benny might get spooked and forget about the money. Mike kept the carnage to himself.

  “You didn’t find anything?” Benny could tell Mike was stonewalling him. As usual, Benny got straight to the point. “Well, whatever happens, you won’t forget who brought you in. You won’t forget old Benny when it comes time to count the money. I’m sure of that. I’m sure you’ll remember.”

  “Yeah, I’ll remember Benny. I’ll remember who got me into this. You can be sure about that.”

  Benny had wanted a little assurance about the money. Mike had given him responsibility for everything. Benny flinched. About to speak, he looked over and met a cold stare from Mike. They were done talking.

  They drove down Wilshire to the Ashton in silence. When they arrived, Benny pulled around into the alley and stopped at the back entrance to the building. Mike got out quickly. He jogged up the stairs and went inside without looking back. Benny didn’t stick around either. He drove away quickly.

  Mike went up the back stairwell to his seventh floor apartment. The small piece of paper he always jammed in the door was still there. Mike would have gone i
n even if the paper was on the ground and someone was inside. He was in the mood for it.

  Mike stripped out of his clothes as he walked from the front door to the bathroom. He was naked by the time he got to the shower. He ran the water hot, stepped in and stayed there for an hour. Afterward, he scrubbed himself dry. His wounds were healing. He felt good. He didn’t dress. He lay on the bed naked and smoked.

  As he lit another cigarette, Mike glanced in the pack. He only had one left. He frowned at the thought of going out for more. He could send out, but that meant talking to old man at the front desk. He didn’t like that idea. He knew it would be more trouble than it was worth. He took out the matchbook he’d found in the kid’s apartment and examined it. There was no phone number or address. Just the words THE SUNSET ROOM in simple and straightforward black cursive. Mike thought about how dark the black was. It filled his vision and his eyes lost focus. He fell asleep with the matchbook gripped tightly in his fingers. The cigarette smoldered in the ashtray on his belly.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mike woke up in the middle of the night. The room was pitch black. He sat up and lit his last cigarette, then got out of bed and went to the dresser. He slid open a drawer and rummaged through his clothes. He found black pants and a dark blue shirt. He put them on. Next, he found a leather scabbard that held a thin six-inch blade. He hung the scabbard off his belt. It was flush with his back. When he put on his jacket, it covered the knife completely.

  On his way out, Mike stopped at his bedside table and got the Savage and four extra clips. He dropped it all in his right jacket pocket. He figured he’d need the bullets. There were at least four guys in that Zephyr and two of them had thunder.

  Mike found a city directory in a drawer in the kitchen. He took it out and flipped through a few pages until he came across the listing for The Sunset Room. He didn’t write down the address. But he did flip to the back of the book and tear out the city map. He didn’t want to get lost.