by Luke Murphy
Calvin surveyed the bar. No one seemed suspicious or new. Rachel stayed close to him. No one seemed to notice them and no one cared.
The bartender came back with a grin. “He’ll see you now. Man, will he get a kick out of you.”
Calvin, leading Rachel, walked to the back room.
Mike squeezed out of a wooden chair behind his desk and limped over.
“Hey, Calvin.”
If his new appearance surprised the bar owner, he didn’t show it.
“Hey, Mike.” Calvin shook his hand.
“Rachel.” The man nodded toward the silent woman. “Please, have a seat.”
Calvin and Rachel sat and waited for Mike to do the same.
“I saw the Chargers signed Jenkins. Wasn’t he your backup at USC?”
“Don’t remind me.”
Mike snorted. “The world works in mysterious ways. What can I do for you?”
“I’m in some trouble.”
Mike picked up a note pad, flipped to a fresh page and grabbed a pen. He sat back and listened. When Calvin was through, Mike spoke up. “I thought you went back to your college look for a reason. Man, does that take me back. You didn’t know your man back then, did you, Rachel?”
She shook her head.
“He was something. King of the campus.”
Calvin shifted in his seat as Mike continued.
“I remember the day my nephew, my sister’s only kid, called me here, excitement in his voice. He told me how the great Calvin Watters came and sat at his table in the library with his nerdy computer friends. Andy said they were as nervous as hell. Boy, were they some surprised when you started talking shop with them. What most people didn’t know, Rachel, not even his college teammates, is that our boy Calvin here used to hang around with the computer geeks in the library at USC. He asked them to show him some computer stuff, even skipped a football keg party one night to hang out in their dorm room. Andy was fixated on him. The party, booze, drugs, sorority girls, that just wasn’t Calvin’s style.”
Rachel smiled at Calvin as he said, “I think we heard enough, Mike.”
“No,” Rachel cut in. “Tell me more about Calvin. He never talks about his college days.”
Mike ignored Calvin’s protests and continued. “All Calvin thought about was the NFL.”
Calvin cut him off. “How is Andy?”
“Doin’ great. Stuck around California working for some big computer company out there. I still help him out when I can. But don’t change the subject. You were a big part of Andy’s life back then. You protected him and kept him out of trouble. He was never the kind to make friends easy and you helped him. When you got to Vegas, I was glad to do the same.”
“And I owe you for that.”
“Nonsense. The first thing I did, before I agreed to help you, was a little digging. Rachel, did you know that Calvin here scored 145 on an IQ test? I knew you were smart, but not that smart. That categorizes him as highly gifted.”
Calvin held his breath. No one was supposed to know about that.
As if Mike read his mind, he said, “That’s right, I found out about it.”
“No one was supposed to know. In my line of work, brilliance isn’t an essential attribute. If no one knew, I knew I’d always be underestimated, which gave me an advantage every time.”
“I figured that. Modest too. That’s why I agreed to help.” Mike winked at Rachel. “We’ve been playing around with computers for three years now. Calvin’s almost the hacker that I am. But I have to admit, he’s a bit more aggressive, ready to take more risks.”
Calvin intervened. “You taught me how to hack into any computer in any protected system in the world, which is going to be an extremely valuable skill now. But you also have underground connections throughout the country. You can get anything for anyone. That’s what I need.”
Mike turned back to Calvin. “Okay, chitchat over. What do you need?”
“New IDs. The total package and by tomorrow.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he said, checking off items on a list. “Anything else?”
“Some added protection for me and Rachel. We need to secure my hideout. Rachel and I need every corner of that building protected.”
Mike thought to himself for a moment.
He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a thick book. Calvin and Rachel pulled their seats closer to the desk.
“This package is just right. Security alarms, motion sensors, fail safes, detectors and cameras inside and outside. Since I helped you set up the computer system there, I already know the place inside and out.”
As Mike continued to write, Calvin asked, “What about a secondary emergency exit plan?”
Mike chewed the end of his pen. “I’ll have it tomorrow when I come out with all the gear. I’m assuming payment isn’t a problem? It’s $20,000, cash.”
Calvin counted Pitt’s money out onto the desk. He could hear Rachel breathe in deeply and hold it.
“Here’s ten thousand. You’ll get the rest tomorrow.”
The bar owner slipped the bills into an envelope, sealed the flap and stuck it into the top drawer of his desk.
As they were leaving, Mike asked, “Do you think Pitt set you up?”
“I’m going to find out.”
“I bet you will. Just let me handle your security issues.”
He felt better hearing Mike say that and was starting to like his chances.
When the cabbie dropped them off again, Calvin said to Rachel, “I’ll walk you to the door and make sure you’re safe. Then I have one more stop tonight.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“What the hell are you doing here? I thought you said we shouldn’t be seen together until things blow over.” Pitt sat at his desk and eyed the bathroom.
Ace loomed silently in the doorway so the bookie would be even more on edge.
Pitt poured some scotch and twisted the lid back on. He threw the bottle into the bottom drawer of his desk, slamming it shut, and rose, finger-combing what was left of his hair over his bald head.
The bookie wore nothing but a pair of white boxer shorts. His fat, hairy belly hung over the waistband and a cigarette dangled at the side of his mouth. He took a hit off the cigarette and then flicked it on the side of an ashtray.
Obviously, Pitt had been trying to disguise his lifestyle, trying to persuade Ace that he could fit in with the rich and powerful. Now Ace was disgusted.
“Don’t get up.” He entered the office as Pitt sank back into his desk chair.
“How’d you get in here anyway?”
“You gave me a key, remember?” He twirled the key chain around his index finger.
Pitt swallowed hard. “Want a drink?”
“No, thanks. I just stopped by for an update.”
He tucked the key inside his jacket pocket and removed a deck of cards, which he started shuffling.
“Speaking of which,” Pitt said, his voice cracking, “what the hell happened to the original plan? I wasn’t going to say anything. I knew you had changed your mind about when and where to murder Grant and I didn’t think I wanted to know why. But since you’re here, why did you change? The cops were supposed to find Watters with Grant’s body in the office. Case closed. The plan had been to set up Calvin. I had started to dial your number at the Golden Horseshoe but thought better of it. So I sat back and waited. So?”
“Sometimes plans just change. That’s all you need to know. If you want to run with the rich and powerful, you have to learn that.”
“I will.”
He moved toward Pitt, through a haze of cigarette smoke, all the while shuffling the cards.
Pitt squirmed in his chair and glanced toward the corner of the room, his neck and face damp with sweat. “Don’t worry. The cops don’t suspect a thing. They were already in here asking about Calvin. They suspect him because he was at the office this morning and now they’re searching for him. Poor ba
stard―in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He grinned, raised his glass and drank a silent toast. “Like I asked before, what are you doing here? You only come out of the shadows when something’s up.”
“What did you tell the cops?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Does Calvin suspect anything?”
“That boy is as dumb as a stump. Not a thing.” Pitt took another hearty swig. “The idiot left his prints all over that office. But it wasn’t easy getting him there. Calvin came in here screaming he wanted out, that he was done. But I managed.”
“You’ll be well compensated, Donald.”
Ace’s reassurance seemed to relax Pitt.
“But I don’t think we should underestimate Watters. He could be a dangerous liability. We don’t know where he is, where he’s going, or what he’s going to do next.”
“You worry too much.” Pitt ground his cigarette into an ashtray and took another sip. His bleary eyes suggested he’d been sipping on scotch all evening. “We both have much invested in Grant’s death. For as long as I’ve known you, I’ve learned that you leave no detail out. That’s why you’re rich and about to get even richer. We have nothing to worry about.”
Because Pitt had been talking and drinking continuously, he hadn’t noticed that Ace was now standing behind him. He couldn’t see Ace pull on a pair of black leather gloves.
But Ace knew the man sensed him. He saw Pitt’s back hair rise.
“You are right. I am a rich man because of my attention to detail.” He dropped a gloved hand firmly on Pitt’s shoulder and kneaded the tight ball. “You’re too tense, Donald. Relax a little.” He massaged the bookie’s fat shoulders and neck.
Pitt tightened up more and gripped the arms of the chair.
“You like poker?”
The question seemed to catch the bookie off guard. “What?”
“Poker. I love it. I know that Texas Hold ‘em is all the craze right now, but I’ve always been a fan of Primero, or as rookies know it, Straight. This was the very first game of poker ever played, the root of the game. This is what they played in the Wild West.”
“What’s with the gloves?” Pitt asked with a tremble in his voice.
“Oh, you know me. Always the cautious one. Shall we try your luck?”
When Pitt attempted to get up, Ace wrapped an arm tightly around Pitt’s throat, squeezed and raised his chin to expose the esophagus. The man struggled to breathe, so Ace tightened his grip, obstructing the air passage. Pitt tried to call out but couldn’t.
“Sorry, Donald. No loose ends. Wrong place, wrong time.”
The cards were gone. With his right hand, Ace pulled a new hunting knife from his jacket and with precision and speed swiped the blade across the bookie’s throat.
Pitt instinctively grabbed at the wound, but it took only seconds for his body to go limp.
In a calm, easy manner Ace cleaned his knife on Pitt’s already blood-stained white boxers. As he was about to slide the knife back into its sheath in his pocket, he heard the toilet flush in the office bathroom. A sliver of light showed beneath the door. The light flickered.
Moving with great speed and agility, he flipped the knife from his right hand to his left to get a better angle on the person coming out of the bathroom. He slipped behind the door, waiting for it to open.
A small, thin woman stepped out. He moved in behind and grabbed her around her wiry neck, the knife ready to strike. He flexed his arm, stifling any scream, and breathed in her heavy floral perfume, but the woman tore at his grip. Her nails cut into his bare right wrist.
“You bitch!” he roared. Saliva spit from the corner of his mouth.
He overpowered her with ease. Sliding his arm down to her shoulders, he slashed the blade across her throat. Blood squirted from the gash as he let the woman drop to the floor.
Again he wiped his knife clean on his victim’s limited clothing and put it back in its sheath. He looked down at the two bodies and smiled.
Now to get what he came for and make it look like a robbery.
He’d known for years where Pitt’s safe was and how to unlock it. That kind of information was always easy to buy, for the right price.
Ace pulled open the cheap framed painting hanging on the back office wall and looked at the hidden safe. As he was about to start spinning the heavy combination lock, he heard a loud thud in the back alley. It might have just been a stray cat, but he couldn’t take that chance.
“Shit!”
After making sure he had left no evidence, he quickly surveyed the area and closed the painting. He exited through the front and locked the door on his way out.
Chapter 19
Calvin left Rachel in a motel until he could return. He didn’t want her to see what might happen when he confronted Pitt.
He couldn’t see Pitt pulling off an elaborate scheme to set him up alone and he wasn’t leaving the office without a name.
The bookie’s Cadillac was parked out front. Calvin used his key and let himself in, locking the door from the inside. Pitt wasn’t getting away.
He marched back where he knew he would find Pitt, a good chance screwing one of his working girls. The thought of a sweaty, hairy Pitt on top of a young streetwalker turned Calvin’s stomach.
As soon as he entered, he picked up the unmistakable, repugnant odor of blood even through the usual stench of the back office. When he followed the scent and saw them, he grabbed the wall. His torture and cruelty hadn’t prepared him for the blood spatter and damage that had occurred in the tiny room. Calvin bent over at the knees.
There was no point checking for pulses—Pitt and the woman were dead. He still had to find out who worked with Pitt to set him up.
As he stepped over the woman’s body, he heard something or someone fumbling at the front door lock.
“Fuck!”
He couldn’t be found there.
With no time to search the office, Calvin jumped a pool of blood and bolted through the office and out the back door.
The front door was locked, of course, so Pitt could engage in activities Dale didn’t want to imagine.
After he picked the cheap lock on Pitt’s door, he walked inside. He saw no one in the front office and kept moving to the back room. The faint fluorescent lights were dim and made the corners of the room difficult to see. He couldn’t hear any noise so, hoping to do a brief search before Pitt heard him from another area, he used a bright compact flashlight to examine the room.
Pitt’s files looked out of order. Drawers were open, magazines lay open, papers were everywhere and opened food wrappers and containers had stained many of the documents. A coffee mug had been overturned and the liquid had absorbed into a sheaf of papers. A bottle of Jack Daniels was still uncapped.
By the looks of it, Pitt hadn’t kept his files up to date or in any kind of order. Standing in front of Pitt’s disorganized desk, Dale swiftly examined all the scattered papers on top but found no clues in the disarray.
He moved around the side of the desk to search the drawers and saw Pitt’s body sprawled on the floor, his face frozen in shock, his throat slashed almost as deep as Grant’s had been. The blood had splattered his head, upper body, waist and thighs and pooled around them.
He pulled his gun and crouched behind the desk. Seeing and hearing nothing, he looked again at Pitt’s corpse. From the thinness of the pooled blood, the murder had happened not long ago. Old blood would have thickened.
He then saw the woman on the floor just inside the office bathroom. Sidestepping a pool of blood, Dale ran to the girl’s side, holstering his weapon. Like Pitt, she had been sliced at the neck and suffered the same massive blood loss.
She was no more than seventeen, a dark-rooted blonde with soft features and freckles over the bridge of her nose. She had a ring in her lower lip and her pupils were severely dilated, pinhole pupils telling Dale she’d been high at the time of her murder. Her overwashed T-shirt and white thong were soaked in blood.
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He raised her hands and saw what he thought was skin underneath her fingernails.
Dale did one more search with his gun drawn, turning on every light as he went, but found nothing before calling dispatch for the crime scene teams. Then he called Jimmy.
“I thought I told you I was going home for the night.”
“Two people were just murdered, Jimmy.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m tired, but I’ll be there.”
“I’m sorry too. Please apologize to Tina for me. Some things are beyond our control. And call Mark and get him down here too.”
Dale retrieved his equipment from the trunk of the car. Pulling on gloves and disposable paper boots, he went back inside.
Within minutes, he heard screeching and whining ambulance and police sirens. When the officials burst through the front door, he waved them to the back.
“No disruption. This is now a crime scene.”
Jimmy showed up less than ten minutes later and snapped on a pair of gloves. Dale was dusting for prints.
“What we got?” Jimmy asked.
Dale said, “Two dead bodies. One is Pitt and the other is a Jane Doe, maybe a hooker. We’ll have to hunt to see who she is. One killer. Both had throats slashed by what appears to be the same knife. Just like the Grant murder. Same killer or a copycat? Not sure on that.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“CSI is working over the body, so collect any evidence that you can. I doubt we’ll find anything. The murderer was here for something. That’s why he called here from Grant’s office.”
“He did?”
“Sorry, Jimmy. Forgot to tell you. That’s why I came back here for a follow-up interview with Pitt. When I was searching through the phone records of calls made from Grant’s office, the last number dialed was Pitt’s at nine-forty this morning, when Grant had been dead ten or more hours.”
“What do you think? Same guy?” Jimmy asked.
Dale nodded. “I think it’s our guy. I want to say that the murders are a serial killer profile. We have three—let’s expect a fourth to make it official. Knife used every time to cut the victims’ throats with one hand, while he has them under complete control with the other arm. Fast, easy, almost impossible to defend against and little or no struggle.”
