Allegiance (Joe Logan Book 4)

by Michael Kerr

  “The hospital…Bellevue,” Tony lied. “She left here a few minutes before you arrived.”

  “Is that your car in the driveway?” Frankie said, drawing his gun and screwing a silencer onto the end of the barrel as he spoke.

  “Yeah,” Tony said, swallowing hard at the sight of the pistol.

  “So being as how Arnie Newman’s car was shot up, and that Margie doesn’t have a vehicle, how come you didn’t drive her there?”

  “A friend took her.”

  “And the friend is…?”

  Tony was not going to lie anymore and risk Ellen being assaulted. “An ex-cop,” he said. “He used to work with Arnie. His name is Joe Logan.”

  “Describe him and the car he’s drivin’,” Lennox said.

  “He’s a big guy, six-four or five. Built like a linebacker. We didn’t see the car. He parked along the street. Told us that Margie was at risk.”

  “Why should she be at risk?”

  “He thinks that whoever shot Arnie will come after her. That’s all we know.”

  Lennox and Frankie looked at each other. They believed the man; he was too scared for both his wife and himself to lie to them.

  They got a full description of Logan, and the number of Margie’s cell phone. Perhaps they would’ve tied the couple up, gagged them and stashed them in a closet, but Ellen annoyed Frankie by telling him that if he laid a finger on her sister-in-law he would be one sorry sonofabitch. Idle threats and insults made by nonentities were like a red rag to him. He punched her in the face, left-handed and very hard, and her head whip lashed as she screamed and rebounded, to end up leaning forward on her hands with blood gushing from her nostrils and cascading down onto the carpet. He hadn’t just broken her nose, he’d pulverized it.

  Ellen was not as meek as she looked. And her temper, when triggered, was legendary. She darted forward quick as a fox and bit Frankie’s ankle through the material of his pants. Just locked her jaws in the flesh and sawed her mouth back and forth until she felt bone grate against her teeth.

  Frankie howled and tried to pull away from her, but it was like trying to detach his leg from a rabid dog. He hit her with a sweeping blow to the side of the head with his pistol, but she seemed to be past feeling pain. Anger and hate had amalgamated to boil up and elevate Ellen into a frenzied state. At that moment she was basically out of her mind.

  Frankie needed her off him. He twisted the gun sideways, pressed it up tight to her temple, pulled the trigger, and Ellen was blown to the side; her body following the blood and brains that were driven out of her skull.

  There was a few seconds of absolute silence. Frankie, Lennox and Tony stared with disparate sentiments at Ellen’s corpse. Her left leg came up off the floor three or four times, kicking at thin air, but it was just muscle contraction.

  “You murdering fucking animal,” Tony shouted as tears ran down his cheeks.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Frankie said, turning and lashing out with his foot to kick Tony in the mouth. The force of the impact shattered Tony’s jaw in three places and knocked out five of his teeth, and a mist of blood shot up from his ruined mouth as he fell back.

  Lennox grinned. This turn of events was unplanned and outstanding. There was still enough coke in his system to let him appreciate the spectacle with acute clarity. The action seemed to be unwinding in slow-motion, like a scene in a DVD would if he ran it frame by frame. He saw each globule of blood slowly spurt from the man’s mouth, which was sagging open wider and wider. Teeth spun out from the now gaping maw; each with its own bright red and liquid contrail looping behind it.

  Violence was an art form, Lennox thought. It had a certain immediate visual and visceral beauty that he was fascinated by, and it was three-dimensional with the added bonus of sound and smell.

  Tony was dazed, and the pain in his side was superseded by the agony in his face. He believed that he was about to die, and he was not mistaken.

  Frankie stood over the injured, bleeding, moaning man, took careful aim and put three bullets in him; one in each eye and the third to the center of his forehead.

  “Fuckin’ A,” Lennox said. “Could’ve been a scene from a Tarantino movie.”

  Frankie took a couple of deep breaths, removed the silencer from the pistol and put it in his pocket, then holstered his gun. He felt better, even though his bitten ankle was throbbing. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “You drive, and stop at the 7-11 store we passed on the way in. I need to buy some cigarettes. This gum is giving me fucking heartburn.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Logan parked in the well-lit lot of The Flatbush, a family diner only two blocks from the address he had for Arnie’s CI. He needed to use the restroom and was ready for a cup of coffee. And he also thought it was a safe place for Margie to wait for him.

  “You amaze me,” Margie said when he joined her at a booth on the back wall, away from the large front windows. “You act as if nothing was wrong.”

  “Sometimes whatever is going down, you’ve got to take time out and smell the coffee,” Logan said with a small smile.

  “Shouldn’t that be flowers?”

  “No, the aroma of roasted java beans works for me. And I don’t often let anything worry me. Things work out one way or another, for better or worse, so why risk getting an ulcer?”

  “Have you got a plan?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to find out who wanted Arnie killed and deal with the situation.”

  They drank coffee. Logan had a piece of Key lime pie, and they talked mainly about old times and Arnie in particular.

  “I’m going to talk to someone, if he’s at home,” Logan said, standing up to leave. “Stay here till I get back, I won’t be long.”

  Margie watched him walk out the door and angle across the lot to vanish into the night. Wondered what the hell she would do if he didn’t make it back. He had left her the car keys, but where would she go? New York City might be a bustling metropolis, but it was also home to a great many lonely people. Her life had suddenly taken a nosedive. Logan was now her only hope to get it back on line.

  Benny had kept well away from the house since the shooting on the pier. He had been staying at a friend’s apartment in the Bowery, sleeping on the couch and walking the streets during the day. Leaving the city was not an option at the moment. He had no money, and had never lived anywhere else in his life. As the days passed he felt safer. Decided that Jack Trask wouldn’t give a shit whether he’d drowned or survived. Maybe it would now be safe to go back home. He had a stash of weed and a few hundred dollars. If he was careful he could sneak in and get it, maybe crash out for a few hours, then find somewhere else to live. He had an address for his father in Chicago. They hadn’t spoken in years, but blood was thicker than water, he supposed. The old man might let him stay in the high-rise apartment ‒ or condo as he preferred to call it ‒ for a while if he paid his way.

  He entered the brownstone by way of the fire escape at the rear. Shimmied the lock of the entry door to the third floor with an out of date credit card and let himself into his apartment. It had been searched. Maybe Trask did want him whacked. He refrained from switching a light on. It could feasibly attract more than moths. He went through to the bedroom, got down on his knees, pulled a section of baseboard away from the wall and grinned. The space he had created by digging out a brick was still filled by the zip lock bag he had hidden there. He pocketed the thin wad of bills and then sat on the edge of the bed and rolled himself a joint. Within a minute of firing it up everything seemed better. The dope had reached his brain and caused him to feel euphoric and totally relaxed. Time stuttered and he had no sense of how long he had been there, and didn’t care. His usual anxiety and fear, due to his lifestyle, was dulled. He began to giggle, but didn’t know why. He finished the joint and crushed the end of it out on the top of the night table, unmindful of burning the ends of his finger and thumb as he then lay back on the crumpled, dirty comforter and imagined being sixteen again, planning a futur
e that included being a rock star and living in a Hugh Hefner-style mansion full of willing, busty babes.

  Logan checked the street, then walked up the steps to the front door and found it to be closed but not locked. He entered and went up to the third floor and stopped outside a distressed wood door with flaking paint and a cracked plastic number seven screwed onto it. There was no light shining out onto the dark landing from the gap at the bottom of the door. He slowly turned the cheap nickel knob, but the door was locked. He had a choice, knock or break in. He drew the gun he had taken from Arnie’s from the pocket of his fleece, stood back and kicked out with all the force he could muster. The door flew back with a cracking, splitting of wood that he thought would wake up everyone in the building. But in this neighborhood he would be surprised if anyone gave a damn what was happening, as long as they were not in harm’s way.

  Benny was hallucinating; laying naked on a large round, revolving bed with a bevy of equally nude and smiling, red-lipped Playmates around him. He was fondling them, and they were pleasuring him. One was giving him a blowjob, another was straddling his face, and his tongue was darting in and out of her hot, wet cooze. He heard a noise, but decided that it was from outside the mansion he had fabricated in his mind, and that they were probably builders working on an extension to his castle of love.

  Logan moved to the side, closed the broken door as best as he could behind him and listened. He couldn’t hear a thing, but could smell the pungent odor of marijuana in the stale air. He moved with the stealth of a leopard stalking its prey, entered the small bedroom and saw the figure lying on the bed.

  At first, Logan thought that he was viewing a corpse. The slim male was unmoving, pale-faced, with sunken eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling in the gloom. Stepping closer to the bed, he reached out with his left hand, gripped the guy’s ankle and shook it hard, and then backed-up quickly as the figure shot up into a sitting position.

  Benny was coming down. His flight of weed-induced imagination plinked out of existence, and instead of being in a large, sumptuous chamber being pleasured by several women, he was back in the real world and lying on his own sweat and semen stained bed. And he could make out the shadowy form of a very tall guy standing motionless with a gun in his hand. Paranoia and panic melded in his brain. Trask had obviously had someone watching the house, front and back, just in case he returned. He had been stupid to think that he was in the clear. Like a dumb critter he had slunk back to his lair in what he had thought was the safety of darkness, and the hunters had known that, given time, he would.

  Logan said nothing. Just kept the Glock trained on the now twitching, agitated young guy and waited.

  “Don’t, please,” Benny whined, and a stain appeared at the crotch of his pants and began to spread as his bladder voided. “I won’t say a word to anyone. Let me talk to Mr. Trask.”

  “Mr. Trask wants you whacked, Benny,” Logan said. “You know too much.”

  “I don’t know fuck all, man. I just do what I’m told and keep my mouth shut.”

  “So what went down at the pier?”

  “I got lifted out on the street, and was told to arrange a meet with the cop. He turned up at the pier and all hell broke loose. I panicked and jumped in the river.”

  “So you sold your handler out?”

  “I’m not a fuckin’ animal,” Benny said, finding some resolve from the residue of drug in his brain. “Nobody handles me. It was business. He paid me for information, is all.”

  Logan moved in quick, grasped Benny’s right hand, which he had raised up to wipe his running nose with the back of, and selected the index finger and bent it backwards till Benny howled. He had measured the force he applied, tearing the connective tissue around the middle joint but holding off dislocating or breaking it.

  “What you need to know is that I don’t work for Trask, and that Arnie Newman is my friend,” Logan said. “You have a choice, talk to me, help me, or die where you lay.”

  It took Benny a minute to assimilate the pain and find a small measure of composure. His finger had already swollen up like one of the blood sausages that his grandmother had served up regularly when he was a kid.

  “Y…you broke my fuckin’ finger,” Benny whimpered.

  “It’s just badly sprained,” Logan said. “And it’s the least of your worries, believe me.”

  Benny looked up into the man’s eyes. They just stared back at him, unblinking and full of menace. “What else can I tell you?” he asked.

  “Everything you know,” Logan said. “And if I think you’re lying to me I’ll tie you up, give Trask a call and tell him that you’re at home and receiving visitors.”

  “All I’ve done is small stuff for Trask,” Benny said. “Followed a couple of guys and delivered a package. I’m not on his payroll.”

  “What about Fallon?”

  “I’ve never met him and don’t want to. He’s connected. The guy is runnin’ for mayor, but he’s an asshole. He heads up a lot of legit companies as a front and rips off pension funds.”

  “What else?”

  “He gets rid of anyone he decides could be a threat to him. I know that Trask and his crew do the dirty work. He just points them and keeps out of the picture.”

  “So Fallon will have told them to kill Arnie?”

  Benny nodded and said, “Yeah, he must have been diggin’ around and got too close to the action. A lot of cops are happy to take more than just free coffee and donuts, but Arnie was pretty straight. Believe it or not I liked the guy.”

  “Let’s hope he makes it, then, because he’s still alive, hanging on.”

  “If Fallon knows that he survived, he’ll send someone to whack him,” Benny said. “And it could be another cop that gets the contract.”

  Logan took that on board. A dirty cop could get to Arnie. It would only take a second to stick him with a rig full of H or morphine. But he couldn’t cover all the bases. “Get your skinny ass in the shower,” he said to Benny. “You stink, and you’re still high.”

  Benny knew that it wasn’t a request. He kept his damaged right hand close to his chest and did what he was told. After a couple of minutes under jets of cold water he was feeling clear-headed, and after toweling himself dry he found some cleaner clothes to put on.

  “Okay, let’s go,” Logan said. “You can help me out, and in turn help yourself.”

  “What’s to stop me doin’ a runner?”

  “The fact that you’re already on the run. And until Fallon and his muscle are dealt with you’ll be looking over your shoulder and waiting for a bullet every minute of every day.”

  “And just what the fuck do you think you can do to change anythin’?”

  “Whatever I need to. And right now I need to negate any threat against my friend. In turn that will benefit you.”

  “Who are you?” Benny asked, looking up at the stranger that he wanted to believe could make it safe for him to get back to his life, however messed up it was.

  “My name’s Logan. Now let’s get out of here. I have a lady waiting in a diner for me, and you look like you could use some food and a cup of coffee.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  He felt a whole lot better. Lennox had gone in the store and bought some hydrogen peroxide, a roll of bandage and a pack of Marlboro. After lighting up and taking a few deep drags, Frankie had initially felt dizzy. But it soon passed. He was back with Miss. Nicotine, and felt better for it, however bad it was for his health. The Surgeon General’s warnings were wasted on him. He accepted that smoking could kill him, but took into consideration that so could being in a RTA, or falling off a ladder, and a million other things. He had grown up in the Pittsburgh metro area, which was in the top ten most polluted cities in America. It had seemed at the time like half the population was suffering from asthma or some other even more chronic lung problem.

  After swabbing his ankle and bandaging it he felt much better. The bitch had scarred him for life with her teeth, but had got hers. He s
miled. Hurting and killing people turned his wheels, and unlike almost all other endeavors, it was both a highly paid and tax-free occupation.

  “Let’s go see if Gus the geek can help us out,” Lennox said. “He’ll be able to link the broad’s cell to a computer and trace it when we call her.”

  Gus Martin was an Afghanistan vet. He had gone out there feeling like John Wayne, but after only three weeks had stepped on an IED and lost both his legs up to the knees. He had prostheses, but chose to spend most of his time in a wheelchair in front of a computer. Strapping on artificial limbs and walking like a robot was not on his list of things to do. He was now a hacker, and capable of making big bucks by doing illegal work for both individuals and companies from the comfort of his swivel chair in a doublewide trailer on a site on the edge of Grassy Bay, within sight and sound of JFK International Airport.

  Lennox phoned Gus and said they were outside, as he walked up the ramp to the door. Frankie limped along behind him. They could hear an Eagles track; Victim of Love being played too loudly inside.

  “Hey guys, how’re ya doin’?” Gus said after using a remote to release the door lock.

  “Doin’ fine, Gus. But we need some of your magic to trace someone.”

  “So come in, take the load off and have a cold one while you give me the details.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Gus was all set up to trace the call that Lennox was going to make to Margie Newman’s cell.

  “All I need is for you to keep her talkin’ for a couple of minutes, max, and I’ll be able to give you a location,” Gus said.

  Lennox tapped in the number.

  They entered the diner and went back to where Margie was sitting and staring into the middle distance.