Dead Fast

by A. J. Stewart

  Richmond walked through the door from the room I had hidden in when the kids had come and stolen some of his shoes while I was snooping around. He looked smug. I wanted to make fun of him, to ask him if he was hiding back there just because someone was banging on the door, but I didn’t. He held the cards, and my objective was to play out this hand and hope my losses weren’t too great, so when the next hand came around, I could nail him.

  “Mr. Jones, you are a fool.”

  So we were dispensing with the pleasantries. “Feels that way,” I said.

  Richmond nodded. “You have caused me enough trouble, Mr. Jones. Both here and at home. I can’t have any more trouble.”

  I shrugged, and Richmond nodded and the big guy who had searched me dragged me by the collar over to near Markus.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “No talking,” said the big guy.

  “Are you?” I said to Markus.

  The big guy slapped my ear with the back of his hand. It was like being hit by my mother for cussing. I looked at Markus and he shrugged again. I turned to Richmond.

  “Look, Richmond. I can help you. I’ll help you load. I’ll even drive the damned truck, wherever you want it to be. Just let the boy go.”

  Richmond smiled. “You’ll drive the truck? Where will you drive it, Mr. Jones? To your girlfriend, the police officer?”

  “Come on, Richmond. There’s seven of you and only two of us. I’ll do what you want. Just let the kid go.” I hoped the wire I was wearing was working and that Marcard had gotten the numbers.

  “No, Mr. Jones. Markus has a lesson to learn. It was my fault for not teaching it earlier. A successful athlete has skin in the game. He runs for his life. Markus will help us load our merchandise, he will help us move it. And he will keep some of it to take back to Jamaica. Then he will have skin in the game, just like the rest of us. As for you? You can help load. That’s all. Unless you run fast? Do you, Mr. Jones? Do you run fast? No? Shame, then I have no use for you at all.”

  He nodded again and the big guy gave me a shove. I had to admit I was getting pretty tired of him pushing me around. But I walked to the pallet and grabbed a few boxes of running shoes, and I carried them to the truck. I moved a little more quickly than the others. Not because I wanted to win employee of the month. I wanted to catch up with Markus without looking like I was doing that.

  We started walking by each other, him to the truck, me away, and I gave him a wink, like I had everything in control. Fake it ’til you make it, that’s what they say. I’d been on the mound more than a few times, clueless about what pitch to throw, so I’d given the batter a wink. It made me look like I was in control, like I had a plan, when I didn’t. I caught up to Markus on my third load.

  “Okay?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Good,” I said, more for the benefit of those listening on the other end of the wire than for Markus. He looked the color of ash. So I turned my attention to the environment. Richmond was on the other side of the warehouse, on the phone. The two lugnuts who had let me in and then searched me were over by the door. They were armed, one with a shotgun, the other wore a handgun in a holster like a cowboy. That left at least one other weapon unaccounted for. We were working on a pallet nearest the truck. The next pallet on that side of the truck was closer to the side wall. At the rear of it there was open space, but no line of sight to the armed guys. And that spot was blocked by the truck from Richmond’s eye.

  We carried boxes and I made a few comments about how hard it was, just to let Agent Marcard know we were still ticking. We finished the pallet, and then two of Richmond’s henchmen pulled the wooden pallet to the side so we had a clear path to the next. I went to the pallet and started pulling at the shrink-wrap. It was thick and tight, but I didn’t care if I opened it. I just wanted this to be the next pallet we worked on.

  The two other henchmen joined me at that pallet and one smiled and pulled out a switchblade. The others waited and switchblade ran his tool around the plastic, cutting through, and we stepped forward and ripped at the wrap. I watched the guy close the switchblade and put it in his hip pocket. I don’t like knives anywhere except a kitchen, and sometimes not even then. So I knew switchblade was going to be the first to go down.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  WE TORE THE shrink-wrap away and started shuttling the boxes to the truck. We were working on the side open to Richmond, and I edged to the corner, and then on my next trip started on the side that was hidden by the truck. My next trip I directed Markus to work on my side. Then I carried an armful of boxes to the truck, and glanced at Richmond. I gave him my poker face, like I had not a thought on my mind. He watched me through snake eyes, wary and cold. Then he spoke into the phone and his attention was taken from me.

  I wandered back to my side of the pallet slowly. Switchblade caught up to me, and I gently bumped my hip into his. It was almost no contact at all, not enough to make him angry or even aware, but enough to change his direction. He followed Markus around the end of the pallet, and I came behind. We got behind the side of the truck, and he went for a handful of boxes. I went for his hip.

  I slipped the knife out of his pocket and he took a moment to realize what had happened. He took another moment to consider what to do with the armful of shoe boxes he carried. It was a moment too many. I held the knife out with one hand, attracting his eyes, and then with the other arm I drove an elbow into his nose. His face splattered like a marinara sauce making a break for freedom, and he dropped to the concrete floor, the boxes of shoes landing on him. Markus’s eyes were as wide as saucers. I held up my finger to tell him to stay put. Mercifully the guy on the ground was whimpering but not screaming, so he wasn’t attracting any attention. Yet.

  I moved to the corner of the pallet and made a what the? face to the next guy, and nodded to the rear of the pallet. He followed me, more curious than wary. They outnumbered us seven to two, so he wasn’t too worried. Perhaps I’d found a pair of pink suede pumps among the Lady Nikes.

  Not so. He saw his buddy on the floor and turned back, and I used his own momentum to drive his head into the corner of the truck’s body. It was a hell of a thump, and it was going to hurt when he woke up. But for now he dropped like a bag of cement. On the downside, my advantage of surprise was gone. The truck shuddered under the momentum of the hit, and attracted the attention of the last two loaders. They both came around the back of the truck fast, and as they reached the corner where the second guy lay on the concrete, one of them kept at me. The second cut along the side of the truck, heading for the cab. So now I knew where the missing weapon was.

  Most fights in movies are like boxing matches. Loud punches, thrown ad infinitum as if the combatants had the endurance of an East African marathon runner. But in real life most fights are like poorly choreographed wrestling events, two guys clenching and grabbing and holding, usually losing balance and ending up rolling around on the ground like mating bears, until they very quickly run out of breath and the whole thing peters out. The result is that most guys look for the Hollywood version, and never see the sucker punch coming. I needed to get to the cab. So when the guy came at me, I didn’t have time for the Marquess of Queensberry rules. I took two steps toward the cab so the guy had to change direction slightly, and then I put my dukes up like a circus boxer from the eighteen hundreds. The guy saw the fists, and focused on that. I kept moving, and he didn’t see my left foot hook around and kick him hard in the side of the right knee. It didn’t do any damage. My left foot isn’t my kicking foot. But it did drop him to his knees. My left foot hit the floor and I pivoted, using my pace to spin me around like Brian Boitano, and I drove my right foot into the guy’s Adam’s apple. I was no punter, but I could kick a decent ball, and the guy flew back onto the concrete, gasping for air. I did a full spin, without the flourish, and kept moving to the truck cab.

  The fourth guy was waist up in the cab, grabbing for the shotgun that was tucked in behind the seat. He
was pulling it free when I arrived. I drove my body into his, my arms crossed and hitting the back of his head. His face thrust forward and smacked into the butt of the shotgun. It wasn’t a big hit, but the butt of a shotgun is rock hard, and it dazed him a tad. Enough time for me to pull him back by the collar and drive his head into the side of the door. Again, not a lot of give there, and he dropped to the ground, not unconscious but not happy all the same.

  Now I had to move. I had four guys down, any of whom could recover and come at me. And I could hear the armed thugs minding the door coming across the concrete. So I pumped the action and blew a shot into the roof. The sound was like the end of the earth. It rattled around the hard surfaces of the warehouse. I heard the door guys stop, probably in behind one of the pallets, which put them in Richmond’s direction. I ran in behind the pallet where Markus was down on his backside, hands to his ears.

  “Are you okay?”

  He looked at me like he didn’t speak English anymore.

  “Are you okay?” I repeated.

  He nodded.

  “Can you run?”

  He frowned.

  “Let me rephrase that.” I got right in his face so he could have tasted the little sandwiches I had eaten in the Field House earlier that day. “How fast can you run?”

  The life came into his face.

  “How fast can you run?” I asked again.

  “Dead fast,” he said.

  I pulled him up and pointed him in the right direction. He was facing the wall next to the roller door. There was room enough for a thin body to get between the pallet and the wall, and then an open stretch to the door. I pointed to the large rubber button on the wall by the door.

  “How fast can you run?” I asked one last time.

  “Dead fast,” he said. Now he was getting it. He looked determined. He looked focused. But he’d never run under gunfire, so it was anyone’s guess how he’d go.

  “Marcard. We are go on three. One, two . . .”

  I called three and flipped the gun up onto the pallet and aimed across the warehouse. I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular. I didn’t really want to hit Richmond or his goons, but at that moment I wasn’t overly fussed if I did.

  I pumped and shot and pumped and shot. If they were smart, Richmond and his boys were staying down until the shells ran out, as they inevitably would. I shot again, pumping slower now, buying time.

  Then the roller started rumbling and clattering and winding around itself, and up it went. It was only about a foot up when I heard the first call of FBI. Then there was freeze and more FBI. I dropped down behind the pallet of shoes and pumped the remaining shells out of the gun. I heard Danielle call MJ, and I slowly stood up, hands in the air like I was in a bank robbery. Danielle stood by the door, wearing a bulletproof vest with FBI emblazoned on it. She had her arm around Markus. The two FBI techs had the guys who had been guarding the door and had wisely given themselves up. I saw Marcard, handgun in position, panning across the room. Dawkins was moving between the pallet loads, sweeping the space. He got to the far corner and looked back to Marcard, and he shook his head. Marcard glanced at me.

  “Richmond,” I said. “Where’s Richmond?”

  We stood looking at each other for a moment, and then the truck started up. The exhaust sent a puff of black smoke into the warehouse, like a magician’s trick, and it moved. Backwards. It was the only way to go. I launched myself into the door of the cab as it accelerated by me. After grabbing the shotgun and taking out the last of the four guys helping load the van, the door hung ajar. As Richmond charged backwards the door flung open, so I grabbed on for dear life. The door flung all the way out, me hanging off the end like an orangutan, until the truck hit the roller door. It wasn’t all the way up and the top of the truck collected it, slowing the acceleration and jolting my door back toward the body of the truck. But not for long. Richmond hit the gas hard and pushed through, the garage door screeching and buckling as the truck ripped at it, and the truck door made to swing away, so I grabbed the cabin and let the door go. We sped out into the parking lot, the sun falling low in the sky. Richmond kept going backwards across the lot, and I saw Danielle and Markus standing under the mangled roller door, watching us careen away.

  Richmond hit the brakes and spun the wheel, perhaps trying to dislodge me, and almost did. My legs were flailing around the tire, and as the vehicle spun my body hung off the cabin, holding on by my fingers, and then Richmond straightened up and hit the brakes and crunched the gears. He should have driven all the way to Orlando in reverse. His change of direction pulled me back toward the cab, and then catapulted me inside, the door crunching closed behind me. I was lying across the bench seat and looked up at Richmond and gave him a big smile. A kid on Christmas morning smile. Richmond snarled and I saw his left hand bring up a shotgun. So he did have a weapon. There’s always one more than you think. But it was a poor choice for such close quarters, and I didn’t want to give him the chance to swing it across his lap and get a shot off. From that range I was swiss cheese. But lying prone across the bench seat didn’t give me a lot of options. So I did the only thing I could think of.

  I pushed myself up into a starting position, like a sprinter low in the blocks. Arms straight like a push up, legs crouched, feet against the door. Richmond swung the shotgun up at the roof, so I launched myself forward like a torpedo. I drove up straight at Richmond’s head and made contact, my forehead to his jaw. It wasn’t pleasant for either of us. I didn’t tend to use my head for smashing stuff on a regular basis, and it hurt. But it was sacrificing my queen to take his king. It hurt him more than it hurt me. Richmond’s jaw buckled and made a sickening, crunching sound. He dropped the firearm and swerved. I doubt he could see. I couldn’t. For a moment everything went fuzzy, and then it went white, as the truck crashed into something and the air bag exploded in both of our faces.

  The air bag deflated and my head fell into Richmond’s lap. I wasn’t sure how mobile he felt, or where the gun was. The doors to the cabin flew open, and I wondered if Richmond was making a break for it. Wondering was all I did because I couldn’t get my brain to communicate to the rest of my body. Then Richmond disappeared from the cab, and I watched him go. I blinked hard a few times, looking at the sagging air bag droop across the steering wheel. My head lolled back toward the open door and I saw an angel. If angels wore FBI flak jackets.

  Danielle reached in to me, a glow surrounding her body, perhaps the sun setting behind her, or perhaps something more ethereal. I didn’t know. She cupped my cheeks and I thought she said everything was okay. Everything apart from the desire for my eyes to roll back in my head, and the brain-splitting headache cutting like an earthquake across my mind.

  “Richmon . . .” I managed to mumble.

  The angel smiled. “We’ve got him.” Her soft hands touched my cheek, my mouth dropped open and I looked at her beautiful face, and I decided that now was as good a time as any to go to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  RON DROVE TO the airport. I had spent the night in Broward General under observation for concussion. Desmond Richmond had also spent the night in Broward General, under police guard, his jaw wired in three places. Evidently my head was harder than I thought, on the inside and out. Danielle was in my hospital room when I woke up that evening, and still there the next morning. She was in the same clothes that she had gotten drenched in at the cricket arresting Cornelius Winston, but she had returned the bulletproof vest. She offered me a smile and ran her soft hand across my cheek again. It was its own medicine.

  Hospitals were the growth business in Florida, and there were two kinds: those that worked on volume, turning the beds over like they were tables at a fast food restaurant and those that charged plenty to look after you in old age until you passed on or ran out of money. Broward General was the former. The doctor came and ran some cursory tests designed to mitigate litigation should I fall in a heap after leaving the hospital, and then discharged me. We we
re all happy about it. I still had a headache but plenty of ibuprofen, and the hospital wanted their bed back. Danielle needed a shower and a change of clothes, and probably a good night’s sleep.

  Ron came down from Palm Beach, and we collected Markus from the UM campus, where he had already attained cult status, despite not yet being formally enrolled. Agent Marcard had taken a statement from Markus and then driven him back to the campus, where he stayed the night in rooms reserved for visiting professors.

  Ron pulled into the short-term parking lot and we walked to the terminal. He asked if I needed a wheelchair and I told him if he found one he’d end up in it. Danielle helped Markus check in, and we called Corporal Lucia Tellis to ask her to drop by the Swan house to let Mrs. Swan know Markus was on his way, and to arrange for Garfield to collect him at Sangster International Airport. Lucia said she would pick up Mrs. Swan and take her to collect Markus herself.

  Danielle arranged airside passes for us so we could go through security with Markus, and we sat at the gate lounge and talked about what he would do for the rest of the year. Danielle went pretty heavy on the study hard line, but Markus took the advice with good nature. He might not have been thrilled about the school work, but he knew what he had to do. I went for a wander to the newsstand, where I bought a pennant flag emblazoned with the words University of Miami Hurricanes. I ripped the little stick off and handed the pennant to Markus and he smiled. I think it was the first time I’d seen him do that away from the track.