Rocks Beat Paper

by Mike Knowles

  I looked at Miles. “Do you still have your badge?”

  The question pulled Miles’s attention away from the driver. “Yeah, why?” Then, he noticed that the windows were glowing.

  “Get it out.”

  “Why, Wilson?”

  “It’s Lock, Detective Croft. Someone just hurt our CI, and we just arrived on the scene.”

  I opened the door an inch and put my phone to my ear. “Keep pressure on the wound.”

  “Now you care?”

  I peeked through the crack in the doorway and saw two cops getting out of the squad car. The driver was a woman and her partner was a man; both wore bulletproof vests and walked with hands on their guns.

  When the two cops were five feet from the door, I yelled, “We’re in here. We’re in here.”

  The door was shoved open and the lead cop yelled, “Police,” and pointed her gun at the three of us.

  “Where’s the fucking bus?” I yelled.

  “Put your hands in the air,” the second cop yelled.

  “I don’t have time for this, uni. Tell me where the fuck that fucking bus is.”

  “I said hands in the air.”

  I lifted my hand and showed them my badge. “Put that gun down and pick up your radio.” I looked at the lead officer. “You, get outside and flag down the paramedics, goddamnit.”

  The cop didn’t shout at us about our hands again. Instead, the other cop lowered her gun and took charge. “What is going on in here? We got a call about a possible assault.”

  “Change it to definite,” Miles said. “This girl is our CI and she’s dying on us.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You said assault. We called this in. Didn’t dispatch say anything about us being here?”

  The cop looked at Monica, and I saw concern in her eyes. “We got nothing.”

  “Fuck! Okay, call it in again.”

  The cop turned to her partner and said, “Do it, Simmons.”

  The other cop had been staring at the pool of blood that had formed around Monica. He snapped out of it when he heard his name. He said, “On it,” and went out to the car.

  The other officer holstered her weapon and stepped closer to Miles and Monica. “What happened here?”

  “Don’t know. We were supposed to meet here, but when we showed up, the door was open and she was like this. It looks like whoever did this beat her up before they stabbed her.”

  “Explains the call about the assault,” the cop said. “This her room?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “We’ve never met here before. She called my cell, told me she had something for me, and gave me a place and time. We rolled on it and found Tammy like this.”

  The cop kicked the duffel bags. “These her bags?”

  “Not sure, either,” I said.

  “She going to make it?”

  “If we get that bus in time,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Garcia. My partner is Simmons.”

  I made a show of looking around the room. “Do me a favour, Garcia.”

  She looked around the room the same way I did. “Sure.”

  “See that bedroom over there?”

  She looked at the room. When she turned her head back to me, it connected with my fist. The impact of the left hook didn’t need the extra help from the cop’s momentum to do the job, but it helped. The blow shut her down and her legs gave out.

  Miles looked at the second body on the floor. “You got a plan here, Detective?”

  “Count to thirty and then call for help.”

  I stepped outside and saw Simmons sitting in the driver’s seat with the radio in his hand.

  I let him see me. “Tell me that ambulance is close.”

  Simmons pulled the radio away from his mouth. “No one heard anything about an ambulance. I got one en route, but it’ll be at least five minutes.”

  I nodded.

  “I didn’t get your name, sir. Dispatch wants to know.”

  “It’s Lock,” I said. “I’m a detective with homicide.”

  “Out of where?”

  “We got an officer down,” Miles called. “Officer down.”

  Simmons came off the seat and shouldered past me. “Garcia!”

  I followed closely behind Simmons.

  The cop knelt beside his partner. “What the hell happened?”

  “She fainted,” Miles said. “She a diabetic or something?”

  I hit Simmons with the butt of my gun before he could answer. The blow caught him in the temple and sent his body on top of his partner.

  I looked down at Miles. In the commotion, he hadn’t moved an inch from Monica’s side. “Pick her up.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I checked the lot before I opened the door again — there were no other additions. The squad car was in the centre of the lane, but it had stopped two spaces away from Monica’s blue sedan. I turned to Miles, who already had Monica in his arms, and dug into her right coat pocket for the keys to the car.

  I opened the door and motioned for Miles to step out first. He got one of Monica’s feet out the door when a bullet shattered the door frame.

  “Put — put her down.” Garcia was on her side with a Glock in her hands that matched the one in my holster.

  “Take it easy,” Miles said.

  “Shut up.”

  “We didn’t do this to her. We just want to get her some help.”

  “Shut up and put her down,” Garcia said.

  “She needs a hospital, not the floor. Let us get her there.”

  Garcia blinked a few times and then shook her head back and forth to disperse whatever mental cobwebs had formed when she was out cold. “I’m not going to ask again.”

  I turned to Miles and slid two hands under Monica.

  “What are you doing?”

  “She needs medical attention. Officer Garcia is the best way to get it quickly.”

  Miles didn’t let go of Monica until my pull elicited a moan from her broken lips. I took her weight out of Miles’s arms and stepped back.

  “Put her down. Do it now.”

  I nodded and pivoted my body. The one hundred eighty degree turn supplied momentum to my arms. When I had all the torque I was going to get, I released Monica’s body and sent her tumbling across the space between us and the cop. From her position on the floor, Garcia couldn’t risk shooting me out of fear of hitting Monica’s airborne body. She decided too late to try to catch the body that was more than halfway to her. She scrambled to get up and get her arms out, but Monica hit her while she was still on one knee.

  Miles and I reacted simultaneously. Miles went for Monica, and I went for my gun. I pulled the trigger twice and two bullets crossed the room before Garcia could get on two feet. The shots missed Monica and hit Garcia twice in the upper part of her vest before anyone could react to the noise. The sound was loud and the effect devastating. Garcia skidded back across the floor and collided with the coffee table behind her before rolling over to her side. She lay on the floor, eyes open, mouth making fish gasps for breath as her brain worked on autopilot to reinflate her lungs.

  Miles got to his feet with Monica in his arms again. “What the hell was that? You could have hit her.”

  “Car,” I said. I put the keys on top of Monica and went to Garcia. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Miles turned and hustled Monica to the car. From my inner pocket I drew a knife. The blade sprang open and I took hold of Garcia’s vest. I plunged the knife into the first bullet hole and used the blade to pry out the slug. I pocketed the slug then moved four inches to the left and did the same with the second hole. Garcia was still fish-mouthing as I walked out the door.

  I took the wheel of Monica’s car; Miles and Monica were in the back seat. I nosed around the police car and drove out of the lot w
ithout braking. I had no way of knowing if the cops got a good look at Monica’s plates, but I wasn’t about to give them a second chance. We transferred Monica to the unmarked car I had left a block away and drove west.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “Whoever got hold of Monica is out to derail the job. They asked her some hard questions and then left her just alive enough to get back to us.”

  “And then they called the police.”

  I nodded and checked the rear-view.

  “Why not just kill us?”

  “Because it would be an unnecessary risk. We’re not what they are after. They don’t need us dead to get it. They just need us out of the picture.”

  In the rear-view, I saw that Miles hadn’t taken his eyes off Monica. “They got a funny way of showing it.”

  “They’re after the job.”

  Miles shook his head. “This was supposed to be an easy score.”

  “No such thing. If you thought there was, it’s because you were telling yourself that.”

  “So who are we after?”

  I hit the brakes and cut the wheel just as the cab in front of me cut into my lane without a hint of warning. I let the question hang in the air while I slipped into an opening in the lane beside me. I checked the rear-view and the side. “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  That got Miles to take his eyes off Monica. “How can you say it doesn’t matter after everything that just went down?”

  “Because it doesn’t. I’m not a detective and I’m not going to waste any time pretending to be one. I know that someone is after the same thing we’re after and they want us out of the way so that they can get it. That is what we deal with.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “We move on Saul tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Whoever is after us isn’t shy. They’re bold and they’re smart. Our best defence is scoring and then taking our ball and going home.”

  “What about Monica?”

  “Her part in this is over. We get her to a hospital and we walk away.”

  “We can’t do that! The cops will pick her up in ten minutes. Those two uniforms saw her. They’ll put a description out for a girl with her head bashed in and a hole in her side.”

  “Not in Jersey,” I said.

  Miles looked out the window at the traffic on the interstate leading us west towards the Long Island Expressway. “Where we going?”

  “Hoboken.”

  “They got cops there, too,” Miles said.

  “Her face looks like that because she wouldn’t talk. I’m not worried about her handling the cops.”

  “She still gets her cut,” Miles said.

  “She still gets her cut,” I agreed.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  Miles wanted to take Monica to the doors; I didn’t try talking him out of it. I parked the car and reached back to turn off the overhead light before I got out to open the back door. In the darkness, the interior light would only bring attention we couldn’t afford. Miles got out first and then stooped down to reach for Monica. I heard him grunt as he lifted her limp body from the car. When Miles had Monica out of the car, I said, “When you put her down, get a picture.”

  “A what?”

  “A shot of her on the pavement. Use the flash.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Do it,” I said before I got behind the wheel and closed the door.

  Miles cradled Monica in his arms as he walked her away from the car. He set her down outside the entrance of the emergency room and took a picture of her body on the pavement; he also refused to talk to me the whole way out to Long Island.

  I pulled to the curb across from Saul’s house and dialled the number for his cell. I thought, given the late hour, I would have to let it ring. He picked up on the third.

  “Did you get the guy?”

  “Girl, actually,” I said.

  “Girl?” Saul’s voice was thick with sleep, and he croaked the word out before he satisfied the urge to clear his throat.

  “It’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “Now?”

  “We’re in the street.”

  Five minutes later, Saul was standing next to our car. He was wearing his blue coat, but he didn’t have it open this time. He wore it buttoned tight over his thin pyjamas.

  “It was really a woman in that car?”

  “That surprise you?”

  Saul looked at me as though I were a stupid child and he was out of patience. “Yes,” he said. “It does. Now, who was she?”

  “Her name is Amina Yousif,” I said.

  “Yousif?” Saul said.

  The name had all of the impact I hoped it would.

  “Sudanese immigrant. Records indicate that she immigrated to Canada five years ago,” Miles said. On the drive over, he was silent, so I did the talking. I laid out the story and what needed to be said. I didn’t micromanage — I knew Miles would be able to spin the details into a web that would hold Saul’s trust. “Want to take a guess about the name of her closest relative in the States?”

  “Ismail.”

  “You got it. Your security guard, Ismail Yousif, is her cousin. What does Ismail do for you, Saul?”

  “He is in charge of my electronic surveillance. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Ismail?”

  “It gets better,” I said.

  “Meaning it gets worse,” Miles said. “Mr. Mendelson, we’ve learned some things. Ismail has been planning to rob your store for a long, long time. This plan has been in the works for almost as long as he has been in your employ. Over time, he has been working to circumvent your security system, so that he can get into the store at night.”

  “Impossible, we have alarms. I set them myself.”

  Miles interrupted Saul. “Ismail found a way around the alarm. He is actually quite an accomplished hacker. But those skills don’t transfer to safe-cracking. That’s where Amina comes into the picture. I don’t know how much you know about Sudan, but it’s not all war-torn. More than half the population is in their twenties, and there is a large network of organized crime. Ismail reached out to his cousin, who still has ties to the right wrong kind of people back home, and she convinced a crew to fly across the ocean. It would take a hell of a big score to convince people to cross continents. Word is the crew has everything they need in place for the job.”

  “What are they waiting for?” Saul asked.

  “The crew was waiting on Amina.”

  “The girl? What did she have to do?”

  “Just one thing,” Miles said. “She had to kill you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Kill me?”

  “Amina had been working in a hospital, and she managed to get her hands on a drug that would induce a heart attack. She was following you home because she was looking for an opening to inject you with the drug. The crew is ready to move as soon as they get the text.”

  “My God.”

  “You were supposed to meet him soon,” Miles said.

  Saul laughed. “But you arrested her.”

  Miles sucked in air through his teeth. “About that —”

  Saul exploded. “You aren’t going to tell me that she got away are you? She wanted to murder me for God’s sake.”

  “No,” Miles said. “She didn’t get away.” Miles pulled his phone out of his pocket and spent a few seconds pressing buttons. The burner was by no means high-tech, and it took some effort to get it to do what he wanted. Miles turned the phone and extended his arm towards Saul.

  He looked at the picture and then at Miles. “Is she —”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Saul took a step back from me as though I gave off a s
tench he could no longer tolerate. “You killed her.”

  “You saw the police pull her over, but you got on the freeway before you saw what happened next. Turns out, Amina was no slouch behind the wheel. She managed to get away from the men who pulled her over, and in the ensuing pursuit, she ran a red light and her car was struck by a cab driving through the intersection. We were not involved in the chase, but we weren’t far behind.”

  “You being not far behind a woman out to kill me doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence, Detective.”

  Miles took advantage of the short silence that followed Saul’s jab to reinsert himself in the conversation again. “We were on the scene seconds after the accident took place. Amina was still conscious. That’s how we were able to learn about the plot on your life.”

  Saul shook his head. “Such a young girl. I can’t help but feel bad for Ismail.” The old man laughed. “Isn’t that silly? Ismail is trying to have me killed, so that he can rob my store, and I’m standing here in my coat and pyjamas feeling sorry for him.” Saul shook his head again. “I don’t know how I’m going to pretend I don’t know about all of this tomorrow.”

  “About that,” I said.

  Deep lines formed between Saul’s eyebrows as he trained his eyes on mine; he wasn’t happy.

  “What about that?”

  Miles took over again. “We’re going to need you to take the day off.”

  “Day off? I haven’t taken a day off in forty years.”

  “I understand that —”

  Saul cut him off. “Forty years. I’ve gone to work with pneumonia, bronchitis, shingles. I’ve been on death’s door and still made it to work on time.”

  “Do you remember where he lived?” Miles asked.

  “Who?”

  “Death,” Miles said. “Because we need you to find his place again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Miles had been the one talking, but I was the one getting the feedback. “So now you want me dead, too? Tell me, who the fuck doesn’t want me dead?”

  Miles put up his hands and diverted the river of anger that had been rushing at me. I eased myself back a few inches, and Miles read the sign correctly. “Hear us out,” Miles said as he took control of the conversation. “The plan was for Amina to kill you and then get to the border and her family in Canada. On the way out of the city, she had planned to message Ismail to tell him that you were dead. With you dead, Ismail and his crew would immediately hit the store and take everything inside. Amina said something about leaving evidence behind that you had robbed your own store before you died, but we didn’t have time to get the whole story out of her.”