THE THOUSAND DOLLAR MAN: Introducing Colt Ryder - One Man, One Mission, No Rules

by J. T. Brannan

  And in his hand was a gun.

  Chapter Seven

  The most important thing in a fight is aggression, plain and simple. You can know all the fancy martial arts tricks in the world, but if you pussy-foot around with them, you’re still going to be in a world of hurt if you try them out in the real world.

  Speed and aggression win fights, period.

  With that in mind, I sprinted toward the man with the gun, travelling fast toward the danger, my baton primed as he started to raise the long-barreled .38 revolver toward me.

  I let fly with the baton at just the right moment, slamming it down hard; heard the satisfying crack as the steel tip broke the radius bone of the man’s forearm instants later. The gun fell harmlessly to the floor, followed by Pablo’s friend, whose screams filled the narrow hallway.

  I rushed in, placing the extended baton through my belt and drawing my knife. I crouched down over the crying man, put the knife to his throat as I’d done to Emilio earlier that very morning.

  ‘Is there anyone else in the house?’ I whispered, but the man was in too much pain to talk; and so I grabbed his head, turned his face to mine so that he could see me. ‘Nod if you understand me,’ I said, and he managed a single nod. ‘Good. Now, is anyone else in the house?’ A shake of the head. ‘Juan?’ A shake. ‘Noemi?’ Another shake. ‘Okay,’ I said, before retrieving the revolver from the floor and crashing it into his head, right behind the ear. No sense leaving him awake; he’d recover from the initial shock sooner or later, and could be trouble. Asleep, we’d both be happy.

  I tied him up with his own bandana, securing his wrists behind his back; if he woke up while I was still there, any movement he made would cause excruciating pain. I realized that might make him scream again, and so pulled a dirty sock from his foot and shoved it into his mouth. I hadn’t had time to ask him if he was okay breathing through his nose, but I guessed we’d just have to take the chance.

  I pocketed the gun and the knife, left the man in the hallway, and strode back to Pablo at the front door.

  The pit bull seemed to have ignored the whole thing, but I was glad to see that Kane was still keeping a wary eye on the proceedings.

  Pablo was still unconscious from the blow with the baton, and I had to drag his heavy, sweaty body back into the house; not an easy job, and certainly not one that I enjoyed. But it had to be done, and that was that.

  I secured Pablo to a kitchen chair, hands bound behind the chair back, ankles strapped to the chair legs. I shoved a sock in his mouth, and decided to check the rest of the house while he recovered. His friend had told me there was nobody else, but there was nothing like checking for yourself if you were slightly paranoid.

  The search took just a few minutes, and the man had been right; there was nobody else there.

  The rest of the house was like the hallway and the kitchen – a mess. Downstairs there was just a living room, where Pablo and his friend had obviously been drinking. Music still blared from an old-school ghetto blaster, positioned on the frame of an old glass coffee table which had long since lost its glass. The TV was showing a rerun of last night’s game, a playoff between the Dolphins and the Jets. I’d watched it live the night before in Average Joe’s Sports Bar on McPherson; it had been nothing to write home about. Pizza boxes lay everywhere, and cigarette ends littered the room; ash trays were nowhere to be seen.

  Upstairs, the bathroom and main bedroom were little better; I was surprised Pablo had never set fire to his mattress, the amount of butts that were lying everywhere. The only other room up there obviously belonged to a girl, which must have meant that the son – Juan – didn’t live there anymore, if he ever had.

  I was pleased to discover – from notebooks and various other paraphernalia – that the girl’s room was Noemi’s, which meant that the girl still lived there, at least.

  Which, I realized, might meant that she could be back at any moment. I didn’t know if she was at school, if she worked, or if she’d just been out the night before and hadn’t made it home yet. But if she was to enter her house to find a man lying tied up on the hallway floor, and her dad bound to a kitchen chair, it might be hard getting her to trust me.

  And so I went back downstairs to wait for her, dragging the unconscious body of Pablo’s friend into the kitchen so that – if Noemi did stroll in – it wouldn’t be the first thing she saw.

  I checked the man’s pulse, pleased to see it was still there, thumping away happily. I saw that Pablo was awake now, watching me through droopy eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I assured him, ‘he’s still alive.’ I stood, and approached him. ‘And if you want me to be able to say the same about you in the next ten minutes, then I guess you’re going to have to start answering some of my questions.’

  Yes, I decided, I was definitely a Plan B kind of guy.

  Chapter Eight

  To be fair to Pablo, he didn’t talk; he might have called Noemi ‘a little slut’ and ‘a fucking whore’, but at least he didn’t betray his own daughter by telling me where she was, or when she might be back. All credit to him, I thought.

  But then again, he’d had it easy; I was never going to beat or torture the information out of him, I’d hoped the mere threat would be enough. I was bluffing, and he’d called it.

  Hitting the man with the baton was one thing – it was simple self-defense. But tying someone up and hurting them was something else again, especially if they hadn’t done anything wrong. And Pablo Pineda – as far as I was aware – had done nothing wrong.

  And so after he refused to answer my questions, I merely left him sitting there with the sock in his mouth as I crashed onto the sofa to wait for Noemi to return home. I’d wait a few hours and see what happened, then readdress my strategy if she didn’t turn up.

  Fate was kind to me though, and after only one painful hour of daytime TV, Kane’s playful yapping warned me that someone was coming.

  I immediately leaped to my feet and checked through the living room window, careful to keep out of sight.

  A girl, mid to late teens, dressed for a night on the town and now more than a little worse for wear.

  Noemi.

  She paused as she entered the yard, confused to see Kane there but delighted as he played his role well and brushed up against her, eliciting a rub under his chin. He dropped to the ground, rolled over, and encouraged her to tickle his belly, which she did.

  It was then that I ran around to the front door and pushed it open, striding out confidently while looking over my shoulder. ‘I will do,’ I shouted back to the imaginary person in the hallway, ‘you too. Thanks very much!’

  I turned forward, acted surprised to see Noemi there.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, you must be Mr. Pineda’s daughter, Noemi.’

  I extended my hand, and she rose to her feet and took it, her expression quizzical.

  ‘And you are . . .’ she said with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said, releasing her hand, ‘I’m Brad Ranson. You’ve met Kane already, I see.’ I smiled at her in the most friendly way I knew how.

  ‘But who are you?’ she asked, and I could see the other question hidden behind the first – and why hasn’t my dad beaten you up?

  ‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said, trying something else seeing as how the reporter trick had done me no good. ‘And it wasn’t your father I came here to see, it was you. I represent the family of someone you used to know.’

  Her head hung down on her chest for a few moments before she met my eye again. ‘Elena?’ she asked me, and I nodded. ‘Ah, shit.’ She paused, looked at her house, thinking. ‘Can we go somewhere else to talk?’ she asked.

  I nodded my head, smiling again. ‘It wouldn’t please me more,’ I said, taking her arm gently and guiding her away from the house with the two tied-up men hidden within. ‘Truly, it wouldn’t please me more.’

  Fifteen minutes later we were entering a nice little place called Caffe Dolce, up on V
ictoria Avenue. It had paninis, salads and croissants – not the usual fare for this area, stuffed full as it was with burrito bars and taco delis, and I approved the choice. It looked to have some promising coffees too.

  We’d not spoken for most of the journey, and I was surprised that Noemi didn’t ask why I didn’t have a car; most people did.

  Caffe Dolce was her suggestion; she said they did great food, but I was surprised she didn’t pick something closer – the whole neighborhood was filled with coffee shops and fast food joints.

  But as we entered, and the staff members all greeted Noemi by name, it became obvious; she worked here, and wanted a familiar environment in which to meet an unfamiliar man. A smart move.

  ‘Hey-hey, good lookin’,’ a young man said from behind the deli counter. ‘Good night last night?’

  Noemi smiled. ‘The best,’ she said. ‘You?’

  The young man shook his head. ‘Stayed in aaaaalll night long,’ he said. ‘Needed the rest after the weekend. Man, I don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘Practice,’ Noemi said with a laugh, then gestured over to a table in the corner. ‘We’ll be over there, okay?’

  The look on her face said it all – please keep an eye on us.

  ‘Sure thing,’ the young man said with a smile, while at the same time casting a suspicious look my way.

  We took a seat, and as I picked up a menu, Noemi – so silent on the journey here – got started straight away. ‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘how did you get out of my house without my papá doin’ a number on your head with his bat?’

  I sat back in my chair, observing her. What should I tell her? What sort of girl was she? A party girl, sure, but she was bright; I thought she might already have her own suspicions, and I wanted her to trust me. Should I be honest?

  What the hell.

  ‘He tried,’ I said. ‘I clocked him with a night stick.’ Before she could react, I opened my hands, palms out. ‘It was self-defense,’ I said, ‘and he’s okay, he’s just sleeping it off. But I don’t want to lie to you, Noemi. I want you to trust me.’

  ‘You beat up my dad and you want me to trust you?’ she asked, eyes wide with incredulity.

  Had I misread her? Was the conversation going to be over before it had even started?

  But then she smiled, and I could see she’d been teasing me. ‘Ha,’ she said, ‘the bastard probably deserved it anyway. He’s a pig. Was he alone?’

  ‘He was with a friend,’ I said, ‘short stocky guy. Had a gun.’

  She looked worried. ‘And what did you do to him?’

  ‘The same thing,’ I said. ‘They’re both asleep in the kitchen right now.’

  She laughed again, long and loud. ‘Oh, that’s priceless,’ she said. ‘Priceless. His friend, Manuel, he fancies himself as a real esse, you know, a real gangster. But he’s full of shit, just like my dad. They just get drunk and watch football, just like the rest of their lame-ass friends.’

  I was beginning to understand why Noemi had been so willing to come with me; whatever I was offering, it would probably be better than a morning at home.

  We decided that Noemi could order for me, and she went off to speak to the young man at the counter. She came back with a lemongrass tea for herself, and a Vietnamese coffee for me – dried chicory with sweetened condensed milk. Not my usual, but it was pretty damned good; it pays to keep an open mind, I guess. She took a bowl of water out to Kane as well, who was waiting patiently outside, and I appreciated the gesture.

  ‘So,’ she said, sipping from her cup, ‘what you wanna know, mano? Police asked me a bunch of questions three years ago, and I don’ think the answers helped ‘em much.’

  ‘What I want to know, Noemi,’ I said, placing my own cup down on the table in front of me, ‘is the name of the boy Elena was meeting on the other side of the bridge.’

  It was a shot in the dark, but it was a numbers game – if there was a demonstrable change in a teenager’s behavior, it was almost certainly connected to the opposite sex. I’d seen it many times in this line of work, and I was just playing the odds.

  There was a brief flicker in Noemi’s eyes, and I knew I’d been barking up the right tree. She tried to hide it, but it was too late.

  ‘You don’ know nuthin’,’ she said. ‘There was no boyfriend, least not that I know of.’

  ‘I didn’t say boyfriend,’ I argued, ‘I just said boy. And I think that you know a hell of a lot more than you make out, and a whole lot more than you told the police. Look,’ I said, settling back in my chair and trying to sound reasonable, ‘Elena’s parents are pressuring the police to open up the books on this again, and they think you were the one that went across to Nuevo Laredo with her.’

  ‘That’s bullshit!’ Noemi exploded, and I noticed the young man looking across at us from behind the counter. I hoped for his sake that he would decide to mind his own business. ‘I didn’t go with her!’

  ‘So she did go,’ I pressured, glad that things were opening up ever so slowly. Before this, I couldn’t even be sure that Elena had even crossed the border.

  ‘I . . .’ Noemi’s shoulders sagged as she looked at me. I could see the thought of a police investigation was niggling at her. ‘I . . .’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Look – if I can find out what happened to Elena, the police won’t become involved, it’ll just stay a private matter between me and her parents. I’m just one man, your name won’t be mentioned anywhere. But if I don’t find out anything, then I’ll have to go back and say I’ve failed, and they’ll try the Laredo PD again, maybe even the FBI. They’re literally at the breaking point. So listen. You help me, you’ll stay clean. Don’t, and – ’ I held up my hands apologetically – ‘I won’t be able to help you. Besides, don’t you want to find out what happened to her yourself? I thought she was your friend?’

  ‘She was my friend,’ Noemi shot back. ‘And yeah, we did go across the bridge a few times.’

  A few times? Interesting. ‘You were the one who encouraged her?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe I was. But the night she went missing, I wasn’t with her, I swear. She went without me.’

  I could piece together the rest of the tale by the look in her eyes – betrayal and deceit, wounds from the past being opened up again. The boy across the river was someone Noemi liked, and that Elena was going to meet behind her back.

  ‘To see the boy?’ I coaxed, and Noemi nodded her head sadly.

  ‘Bitch,’ she said, still angry after all those years. ‘I take her over there, get her introduced, get her into the clubs, you know? Then she goes and takes Santiago from me, I mean right out from under my nose, you know?’ She shook her head, as if she still couldn’t believe it. ‘I mean, what was she doing? What the hell was she doing? She was supposed to be a friend, and she did that shit to me.’

  I sipped slowly at the chicory coffee as I listened to her, various scenarios playing across my mind. The first was that Noemi might be responsible for Elena’s disappearance in some way. In a fit of jealous rage, did she suggest to one of the cartels that Elena was ripe for the plucking? Did she set up the kidnap? Or did she actually kill Elena herself, then hide the body?

  I had another name to go on now too – Santiago. Who was he? Was he still in the picture, over in Nuevo Laredo?

  There were so many questions, and I hoped Noemi would continue to answer them.

  ‘Did you kill her?’ I asked, completely deadpan. No point beating around the bush, right?

  She looked at me as if I was crazy, and I studied her expression as she did so; and then she burst out laughing, nearly falling off her chair.

  ‘Me?’ she gasped, after regaining some semblance of control over herself. ‘Me? I don’ even step on flies man, I don’ be hurtin’ nobody. Did I kill her? Shit. If that’s the best you got, you’ve got problems, mano.’

  I smiled at her. ‘I guess you’re right,’ I said. ‘But when I tell the police what you’ve told me, you’ll start t
o have some pretty serious problems too. Because they’ll start asking the same questions I am. Like did you kill her?’

  ‘No man,’ she said, eyes wide, taken aback by the force of my last question. ‘No way, I’d never do that man, never.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘so why don’t you lead me through things, step by step?’

  She looked at me, then nodded her head. ‘Okay mano,’ she said, ‘okay. When do you want me to start?’

  ‘Why not start with your first visit to Nuevo Laredo, and we’ll go from there?’

  She took a deep breath, got control of herself, and began her tale.

  Chapter Nine

  Noemi had joined the same high school as Elena, and they’d become friends within days of knowing each other; Noemi’s wild, party-child nature must have awakened some inner desire in Elena to seek out some excitement in her own life.

  Noemi had heard about the parties that occurred over the river, how young girls were allowed into clubs, and she encouraged Elena to speak to her family about it over in Nuevo Laredo. Elena did as she was asked, and found a willing cousin to help them.

  And so it was that Mateo Ramirez – a twenty-year-old cousin of Elena’s on her mother’s side – had driven across to Laredo one night, picked them up and driven back to Mexico, where he and his friends had taken them into Nuevo Laredo’s downtown party zone. And to hear Noemi tell it, it had been everything it had been cracked up to be – drugs and drink everywhere, and nobody too young to party all night.

  There was a gang presence, sure; they saw violence in the clubs, on the streets, but that in some ways was another part of the thrill, the excitement. It was the feeling that they were in forbidden territory, completely alien to them. And when Mateo and his friends had demanded sex with the teenage girls, they had complied readily; their judgement was clouded by alcohol and drugs, but also by their hormones and the added excitement of being found attractive by older boys, men. They hadn’t seen anything wrong with it, and Noemi had eventually become involved with a young man called Santiago Alvarado.