When the Man Comes Around

by Bradley Wright

  Then he heard tires squeal, but not from the truck they were putting Johnny in. He looked to his left, and four men jumped out of an SUV and started shooting at the truck taking Johnny hostage. Lawson recognized the four men, they were De Luca’s men who had shot at him in front of Battista’s just a few minutes ago. But if they were shooting at the people taking Johnny, then who was taking Johnny?

  Lawson took a step back into the crowd for a moment. The truck with Johnny inside roared to life, the back tires started spinning, and in a cloud of smoke it propelled forward away from the oncoming gunfire. Lawson pulled out his phone and called Cassie.

  “What the hell, Lawson?” she answered in a panic. “My radio is calling shots fired at the LINQ Casino!”

  “I don’t have time for this, Cass. I need to know who owns a navy-blue Ford Expedition with the Nevada license plate 212-ZAN.”

  “Are those gunshots?” Cassie ignored Lawson’s request. She was hearing De Luca’s men firing the last few shots at the escaping Expedition before they jumped back in their Tahoe and sped off after them.

  “Cassie! 212-ZAN! I need it now!”

  Lawson ended the call before getting confirmation from Cassie that she had heard him. He didn’t have a choice. Someone was getting away with Johnny, which meant they were getting away with the flash drive. He couldn’t let that happen. Lawson pulled his Beretta and walked around the front end of a Black Mercedes Benz S500 that sat closest to him in the road. He pointed his gun at the already frightened brunette woman in the driver’s seat, and when she opened the door he hurried her out and hopped behind the wheel. He put the sedan in drive and mashed the pedal to the floor. The car shot forward like a rocket.

  He swerved around a few slower-moving cars and zoomed past Harrah’s, then the Venetian, and finally the Palazzo when he saw De Luca’s men making a right just in front of the Wynn. Lawson arced his right turn around two stopped cars, slid sideways onto Sands Avenue, and as his back tires gained purchase on the pavement, he veered across two lanes and three cars to put himself in position to run down the first of the escaping SUVs. What he was going to do once he reached them was another thing entirely.

  26

  About two football fields in front of De Luca’s men in the black Tahoe, Lawson could see Johnny’s captors’ Ford Expedition. The Mercedes that he had “commandeered” was much faster than the Tahoe, so he closed in fast. Lawson was no wheelman, far from it in fact, so he really didn’t know what to do. He didn’t care about De Luca’s men. All he cared about was not losing sight of that Ford Expedition. He had to know who was taking Johnny. And more importantly where they were taking him.

  Lawson decided that since his car was much faster than the Tahoe, he would just go around it and pursue the Expedition. He accelerated to go around the Tahoe on the right side, but before he could pass, the driver swerved over and cut him off. Lawson slammed on the brakes, swerved left, floored the pedal once again, but the SUV swerved to block him. As this little automotive dance was taking place, the Expedition up ahead began to put even more distance between them.

  Not good.

  Then the driver of the Tahoe slammed on the brakes, and Lawson was too close to keep from hitting it. When the front end of the Mercedes smacked into the back of the Tahoe, metal crushing metal echoed all around him, the airbag deployed, and a burning sensation seared into Lawson’s skin. As he tore at the airbag, muffled sounds of gunshots reached Lawson’s ears just before the bullets penetrated his windshield. Lawson instinctively ducked as glass rained down on him. He reached down for the shift knob, threw the car into reverse, and hit the gas. His tires squalled as the Mercedes began moving backward, but his escape was short lived. He heard someone lay on the horn just before he heard the metal-on-metal clash once again. His body was whipped back against his seat from the jarring impact. In front of him, De Luca’s men exited the Tahoe and began to walk toward him. Guns raised.

  Lawson noticed his cell phone ringing on the console. It was Cassie calling. But instead of reaching for his phone, he reached for the Beretta tucked in the front of his pants. He fired two shots before he could really even take aim. Hitting them was a priority, but keeping them from coming any closer before he could get out of the car was imperative. As soon as the men heard the shots, they took cover behind the Tahoe. Lawson took two more shots through the open windshield at the man’s feet on the left side as he took cover behind a door. He missed both, but it gave him a moment to push the start button on the car.

  Nothing.

  Several gunshots rang out and Lawson again took cover. This time, he stayed low and crawled between the two front seats to the back. He only had a couple of bullets left in his magazine. There were four of them, and he had no way to get cover. If he expected to live through this little shoot-out, he was going to have to get creative. His mind flashed to one of the first run-ins with the underground crime world he and Cassie had when he first arrived in Las Vegas. Cassie had been tipped off by a local DEA agent that one of their informants in a smaller drug ring was on his way to execute someone for infringing on their turf. Cassie didn’t want to run it down because the DEA agent had given them faulty intel before, but Lawson always looked to get in the middle of the action. The info-gathering and building-a-case portion of his job nearly drove him mad day to day. So any shot at finding some trouble and Lawson was all over it. Even when it wasn’t the smart thing to do. Cassie tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen.

  The two of them had pulled up to the warehouse where the execution was supposed to be happening, but it wasn’t an execution. It was a large cocaine sale, and the informant had flipped on them. The men were waiting for Cassie and Lawson to show up. After a defensive shootout, the two of them barely made it back to their car. After a chase much longer than the one Lawson had just been through, they ended up in a similar position: outmanned, outgunned, and no cover. As the men closed in on them, Cassie’s panicked suggestion was to put the car in drive, climb out the back, and shoot the gas tank to blow the car up when it got near them. It sounded good, and Lawson knew she thought of it because it happened in movies all the time. But Lawson knew from experience that even if you were a good enough shot to hit the gas tank on a car that was rolling away from you, it still wouldn’t work.

  When he first made detective in Lexington, Kentucky, to celebrate, one of his buddies on the police force bought an old junker car. It still ran, barely, and they drove it out in the country to have some whiskey and shoot it up for fun. They ended up challenging each other, betting a night handcuffed to the car on who could make it blow up first. After many errant shots, several did actually penetrate the gas tank, but there was no explosion.

  However, when Cassie suggested it that day, it gave Lawson an idea, which he put the idea to use and it actually worked. And it was that flash of a memory that gave him the creative idea he needed to give himself a chance to get out of the near impossible situation he found himself in now. This little trick working twice for him would be nothing short of a miracle, but when you’re out of options, a miracle was still something to hope for.

  Lawson reached back toward the front dash and depressed the cigarette lighter. He then shot through the open windshield a couple more times to buy him the valuable seconds he needed. De Luca’s men once again took cover behind the Tahoe. Lawson wiped the sweat running into his eyes on his blazer sleeve, and opened the glove box. The paperwork to the car was there. Lawson pulled it out, wadded it into a long cone-like shape, and when the cigarette lighter popped up, hot, he grabbed it and opened the back door. A couple more gunshots rang out from the Tahoe. Lawson popped open the gas cap, stuffed the paper down as far as it would go, shoved the hot lighter in behind it, and shut the gas cap to hold it in place. He then quickly opened the driver-side door, held his foot on the brake, jammed the shifter into neutral, and as a few more bullets clanked against the front of the car, he hurried toward the back end of the Mercedes. This would have been a lot easier, and a wh
ole lot safer, if the car would have started. But since it wouldn’t, he would have to push.

  Mercedes S500s, thankfully, were made like tanks, and it absorbed the oncoming bullets with ease. But with a car made like a tank, that meant a lot of weight. Fortunately for Lawson, the road they were stopped on was on a gradual decline. But if the car didn’t get enough momentum as he pushed it forward, he was a dead man. And if it did get enough momentum but for some reason the paper in the gas tank didn’t catch fire, he was also a dead man. They would have him in the open behind the car, dead to rights. His odds weren’t great—they were terrible, actually—but he didn’t have any other choice.

  Lawson started pushing with all that he had. He drove his legs down into the hot pavement. He pushed forward on the mangled trunk with as much force as he could muster. The veins in his neck were bulging, sweat poured over every inch of his body, and it was all he could do to breathe in and out as he struggled against the weight of the car. The bullets kept coming, and Lawson kept pushing. There was commotion all around him—other cars laying on their horns, people screaming and panicking to get away from the gunfire—but Lawson heard none of it. All he could hear in his mind was his little girl laughing. The smile on her face that day on the boat. He dug deep within himself to find power that only the thought of living for his daughter could bring. And after what seemed like far too long—long enough for that paper to have burned up—finally, his push paid off.

  The car slowly started to become easier to push. Once he felt that momentum, another shot of adrenaline gave him another gear, and he roared forward, the car moving faster and faster now. He drove forward with all his might, and when he thought it had enough speed to make it to the Tahoe, he let go, dove toward the sidewalk on his right, and looked up to see if he had just saved his own life or sealed his own fate.

  Lawson rapidly squeezed the trigger to buy him enough cover time for the explosion, but the last few presses of his finger did nothing. The slide on his pistol locked back, his magazine was empty. The men walked out from behind the cover of their SUV as the Mercedes bumped into the back of it.

  Nothing.

  De Luca’s men looked at each other, then to the Mercedes, then to Lawson, then back to each other. Then they began to laugh. All of them. Gut-laughing at Lawson’s failed attempt to save himself. Lawson thought about making a run for it. But he knew there was no time. As the four men continued to laugh, each of them trained their guns directly on Lawson as he lay on the ground. It was all over.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, they were all gone.

  27

  The blast was much larger than he remembered it being all those years ago. But it worked all the same. The Mercedes was a much larger vehicle, maybe that was the reason the ball of fire reached so high into the blue sky above. Regardless, it blew the men back off their feet, and if they weren’t already dead, the chain reaction of the Tahoe blowing sky high certainly did the trick. Lawson was lying about a hundred feet from the explosion, but the heat from the fire was so intense, it felt as if his face was melting.

  Pieces of both of the vehicles rained back down to the ground in a chorus of bangs, and Lawson managed to push himself up to his feet. He was soaked with sweat, from the hundred-degree sunshine, from the exertion of pushing the Mercedes, and from the frying pan that was the asphalt he had been lying on. People were still screaming from various places around the explosion. The crackle of fire continued in front of him. He bent down and picked up his Beretta. Knowing it was empty, he began to walk toward the fiery blaze. On his way there he pulled his phone from his pocket. Five missed calls from Cassie. One voice mail.

  In the distance he could hear sirens, fire truck, ambulance, and police were all on their way and arriving in minutes. There was no time to go to jail now. He had a flash drive to retrieve. Now all he needed was to know where to go get it and a way to get there. Just like the rest of life, problems never end. Lawson had always known this of course. Being in law enforcement, there are days that are so dark it seems that all you will ever see again is problems. So you either don’t fight it and give up, or you do what Lawson had always enjoyed most, get to solving them.

  As he approached the first dead De Luca gunman, he thumbed around in the phone and pressed on Cassie’s voice mail.

  Nevada license plate number 212-ZAN is registered to Sandy’s Laundromats, a business owned by Sokolov Enterprises. As cliché as it gets. Lawson, please call me ASAP. Las Vegas is on the verge of going on lockdown from all the havoc you and De Luca are wreaking. I’m trying to throw the authorities off your scent, but you’re making too much of a stink. And since I am the only person who knows you, they are all up my ass about it. Please at least let me know you’re okay. And please tell me you aren’t caught right in the middle of a Mafia turf war. I wish I could say I was surprised.

  The voice mail ended. Lawson bent down next to the severely burned gunman and confiscated his weapon. A Glock 17 pistol. He went around to the other three dead gunmen and did the same. All told he had enough ammo for two guns and an extra magazine. The sirens were closing in, and the heat next to the mobster bonfire was positively unbearable. With a quick glance at his surroundings, he had his choice of vehicles. Several cars that couldn’t get around the crash site were abandoned by their owners when things got explosive. Lawson walked over to a white Toyota Camry, still running, got inside, and took a long deep breath of cold, conditioned air. Then he put the car in drive and pulled away.

  Just like that, his questions were solved. He now knew where to go—back to Sokolov’s room at the D casino—and this wonderfully cooled Toyota was his how to get there. As he considered earlier, however, problems in life never ceased. He just solved two of them, and now he already had another. How in the hell was he going to get through Sokolov’s men to get to his room? And once he got there, how the hell was he supposed to save Johnny, retrieve the flash drive, and get out of there alive?

  Problems were never-ending. You chose either to solve them or to give up. Lawson was a lot of things, but a quitter wasn’t one of them.

  He started back down Sands Avenue toward old Vegas, and the D Casino. He put his phone on speaker and dialed Cassie.

  “You’re alive,” she answered dramatically.

  “And so are you. Now that we have that cleared up, I’m going to need your help.”

  “Asshole. What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?”

  “Listen,” Lawson said, “Sokolov has Johnny, and Johnny has the flash drive. You can bet by now that the original video of his meeting with Delaney and Walters has been deleted by Nero from the security system’s hard drive.”

  “So the flash drive is the only thing left that can completely clear your name.” Cassie finished for him.

  “Right.”

  “So let me have a team go to Sokolov’s—”

  “Cassie,” he interrupted. “You know that won’t work. You’ll have to have a warrant to get in there. And even if you didn’t, Sokolov would have the flash drive hidden by the time you could pull a team together to get to him. I am the only person that can clear my name.”

  Cassie let out a long sigh. “So, what, Lawson? You’re going to go in there and take care of this all by yourself? An entire team of gangsters will just, what, cower at your presence and let you walk right in?”

  “I expect quite the opposite, Cass. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll die before I let that proof get lost. Because if I lose it, I lose Lexi. And if that happens—”

  “You might as well be dead. I get it. I’m on my way to the D Casino. Do not go in there without me. And by the way, you’ve become quite the drama queen since you got out of prison. So morose. Morose means—”

  Lawson ended the call. Cassie was doing that thing again where she resorted to humor when she was nervous. The last thing Lawson needed on his way into the lion’s den was someone else’s nerves rubbing off on him.

  28

  Lawson pulled the car under the large red
D sign and into the valet tunnel of the hotel casino. He handed the Toyota keys to the valet attendant and hurried in through the sliding glass door. He had a little over a thousand dollars in cash on him from De Luca’s stipend. As he walked into the gaming area, he gave a quick scan of the tables. He saw old and young, large stacks and small stacks of chips, but what he was looking for was very particular. Lawson and some of his friends used to come to Vegas when they were young. They barely had enough money to afford the drinks, but they always managed at least a short amount of time at the tables before they went out to the pool. The drinks were free while you played, and if you got a little lucky at all, the hundred dollars you brought to gamble with could last you long enough at a five-dollar table to get a few drinks in you. Albeit drinks that were light on alcohol, but drinks all the same.

  Lawson found the five-dollar-minimum tables, and at the far end, he could see a group of three young men wearing board shorts, sunglasses atop their heads, and party T-shirts to boot.

  “You guys having any luck?” Lawson asked.

  By the way the three of them looked at him, he could see in their eyes that he must look worse for the wear.

  “Not too bad, bro,” Spiked Hair answered.

  “You want to make a thousand dollars?” Lawson went with the direct approach.

  Turns out they did want to make some extra drinking money—shocker—so they said they would do as Lawson asked. He didn’t know if they would actually go through with it, but it was a risk he had to take. He would know in a matter of minutes if the grand he handed over to them had been well spent.