Avi dragged his eyes from the bundle of blue fabric and the burning body beneath. A motorboat floated at the corner of the wharf, tied off to a ladder that climbed up the round piling.
He called down to his two nearly naked, somewhat singed friends, dangling in the circus material, “If I get you to the ladder, can you get to the boat?”
They both looked where he pointed. Tim wiggled his hands free and then hollered up at Avi. “Swing away.”
Avi swung the hammock away from the dock and bounced it closer to the corner. When it looked like they were close enough, he began swinging them sideways as well. Kissy kicked her legs to increase their momentum. Tim kept his legs wrapped tightly around Avi’s girlfriend. They had to spin so that Tim was facing the ladder. The spin added just a little too much oomph. Avi heard Kissy grunt in pain at the same moment that Tim crowed his triumph. Avi couldn’t see the ladder from where he was but he heard Kissy and Tim hold a quick muffled conversation.
Then Tim yelled up, “We can’t climb down unless you unhook the rigging.”
“It’s by the side door.” Kissy added.
“I’ll meet you at Circus Freaks.” Avi nervously released the silk fabric. “Be safe.”
He turned away as Tim laughed.
“Wait!” Kissy hollered and a moment later a key on a green string flew up onto the dock. Avi dove and caught it before a puddle dragged it back over the edge.
“Got it!”
The siren blasted again.
“GO!” Tim and Kissy yelled at the same time.
Avi ran down the alley between the containers. He banged on container thirty-three as he knelt to unhook the carabiner. He pulled the flexible fabric to take pressure off the carabiner and lifted the safety lock. The carabiner came off easily and as soon as he let go, it flew along the cement towards the water.
“I’m going to let you out now!” He pounded on the side of the container as he raced around to the front.
An explosion rocked the dock just as he rounded the corner. Avi fell to a knee and turned instinctively to see what was on fire but he heard the siren speeding closer and forced himself to focus on the woman trapped in the shipping container. He pivoted to the door to pull out the second padlock. He stuck both padlocks and the paperclip and bobby pin into Tim’s satchel.
Standing, he pulled the satchel on over his head and lifted a leverage bar in each hand, rotating the locking mechanisms. He reached into the lockbox in the center, key in hand, but found the lock was already unlatched. He cheered as he pulled the door open.
Then he was smacked in the chin with a swinging combat boot. His head snapped back and he fell. A splash of water was displaced when his head hit the wet cement and he felt droplets landing on his face before he blacked out.
Twenty-one
Kissy huddled in the boat, picking at the knot in the fabric around Tim’s waist as he guided them along the manmade shoreline to Circus Freaks. She’d slipped out of her own loose lasso of silks to climb down into the boat and now suffered from a vision of the boat capsizing and Tim being dragged down by fifteen yards of sodden fabric.
She needed something to focus on or she was going to let the panic take over. Tim had refused to turn around when they heard the explosion. They could see the dock and it wasn’t container thirty-three that had blown up. Anything else was not their concern, he had said. Kissy didn’t necessarily agree with him on that. But she was wearing green galoshes, an oversized sweatshirt, and granny panties and freezing to death on a stolen motorboat. She had her own battles to fight.
Like freeing her friend from swaths of blue silk.
They made very good time getting to the waters behind Circus Freaks. Then they had to search around a bit for a way to get up from the water. About ten pilings from the circus school, they found steps in the cement curving down to a small dry dock under the pier. They tied up the boat and Kissy suddenly wondered how they were going to explain themselves when they got back to the little committee meeting.
She gathered up her end of the silks and helped drape the other end around Tim’s shoulders. They climbed up to street level and wrapped themselves up against the wind and rain as they made their way to the darkness behind Circus Freaks. Tim headed for the back door.
“Hold on.” Kissy pulled on her end of the fabric to stop him. “The ladies would love to see this, but how about we sneak in the front?”
“You’re very smart.” Tim complimented her in such a surprised tone that she hit him.
They had to circle around a couple of buildings to find a clear way to the street side. There was no traffic this late at night but they hugged the buildings and ran like a couple of drunken high school kids through the bright pools of light off the few working street lamps.
“You’ve had four jobs since I’ve known you as the KC.” Kissy began. “Your first target was Avi.” She paused as they picked their way around a particularly deep puddle. “He’s still alive. Your second target was Kevin Koehler who pretty much killed himself.”
They reached the door to Circus Freaks and Tim held it open for Kissy. The swinging doors at the far end of the little lobby were closed. Kissy tried the door to the office with no luck.
Tim reached over her head and slid his fingers along the top of the doorway. He pulled down a key, unlocked the door, and returned the key to its hiding spot.
“That’s so Julia.” Kissy whispered.
Tim nodded and hurried her inside. A stack of neatly folded towels lay beside a basket holding variously colored yoga mats. Tim grabbed a handful of towels and threw most of them at Kissy. He kept one towel to work on his hair. She turned away from him to peel off the soaking wet sweatshirt and wrap herself in a delightfully dry towel.
“Okay, so target number three is venerable old Edward Parker who’s life you actually saved so he could throw himself out a window.” She squeezed water out of hair over a wastepaper basket sitting beside the old wooden office desk. “And I just electrocuted number four.”
She picked up a pair of scissors and slipped one blade under the useless bandage around her neck. She snipped and threw it in the trash. Then she walked over to where Tim was attempting to dry his legs despite the mounds of sopping wet silks fabric surrounding him.
He looked up. “Your point is?”
Kissy took a deep breath. “You’re not very good at your job, Killer.”
She sliced through the fabric nearest the knot and with three snips had Tim free. The fabric fell to floor around his feet. Kissy looked up into his astonished face, smiled, and then returned the scissors to the desk.
She barely heard Tim murmur, “I like it better when you call me Timothy.”
Twenty-two
A kick in the ribs quickly woke him up. Women’s arguing voices and running feet reminded him where he was. Avi pulled a hand up to his chest and tapped the badge he’d pinned to his coat.
“I’m not the buyer.” He managed to croak, his eyes still closed. “If you don’t like cops, go to the bright blue building.” He flung his right arm out, pointing north. “They’ll help.”
The pain in his head made it hard for him to speak. He paused for a moment to breath and feel his ribs. Then he flung his left arm out and pointed south. “Or the glass backed building that way is the hospital.”
A woman knelt on the wet ground at his head and he opened his eyes to see as her gentle fingers probed at the back of his head. She was an older woman with a face that had seen lifetimes. She was either of Hispanic descent or had spent years in the sun and she looked as bald as him with the rain plastering her thin white hair to her skull. Her eyes were tired and concerned, but she wasn’t looking at his face. She was watching the half dozen women still tripping out of their prison.
Avi looked up at them. Each one was unique. There were women of all skin tones, of all shapes and sizes. They had to work their way around a young woman with teal blue hair sitting on the edge of the container pulling on her steel toed combat boots. The st
ench coming out of the container made Avi wonder if the girl had no sense of smell. She paused in tying one boot to look at a dark Asian woman who had dropped to the ground and sat hugging her knees and staring up at the rain.
“Ling stopped crying.” She observed. “Doc!” She screamed at the woman tending to Avi’s head, “Ling stopped crying. It’s a fucking miracle.”
The girl grabbed at a younger girl in a sari climbing out of the container and tucked her in between her knees. The younger girl complied, burying an ear against the boot-swinger’s knee as her big eyes took in the chaotic dock.
“We think Vanessa was building a very special kind of brothel.” Doc spoke quietly. Avi guessed she had some battlefield experience.
“Vanessa.” Avi repeated the name in a growl.
“You know her.” It wasn’t a question.
Avi nodded his head and then reeled at the nausea that rose in his throat.
Doc smiled sadly, a hand on either side of his face. “Don’t do that.”
“Choke him, Doc.” A woman who might have been as tall as Avi if her were standing ordered the old lady, “Choke him. He’s seen our faces.”
“Have you done something illegal?” Avi asked, trying not to move.
She spit back, “Cops always think so,” and cocked a hip.
The Doc walked her fingers down along Avi’s neck. She used one hand to point south and then north. “Pretty Girl, you can hear the sirens. If you want to avoid the cops, the hospital is that way. I believe you can find alternative assistance in a blue building that way.”
Pretty Girl stalked up to Avi and towered over him. “I am memorizing your face, pig. If I see you again, I will scratch your eyes out.”
She spit on him and then tugged her skirt down and tripped away along the row of shipping containers, following a few other women in equally senseless shoes.
“Chickenshit!” Boots called after her. Pretty Girl responded with one finger and kept on walking.
“With a head wound like this,” Doc murmured, “no doctor would be surprised if you don’t remember how many women came out of that container.”
“I count four,” Avi said. “But I could be seeing double.”
Doc smiled and seemed to breathe a little easier. A rubenesque beauty wearing only a bathing suit and sarong ran over to them from the alley between the containers.
In a strong French accent, she reported, “Katie and Jade loaded Tiff into an ambulance and drove away.”
“Fucking bitches,” Boots commented.
The woman in the one-piece ignored her. She trotted over and looked sideways at Avi. “Why do you help him, Doc?” she asked.
“He let us out,” the old woman answered simply.
“Monsieur, do you drive a white sports car?” she asked.
Avi nodded weakly.
“Well,” she said sadly, “somebody blew it up. With your friends still inside.”
“Not my friends.” He took a deep breath and then gasped at the pain and grabbed his ribs.
“That was Jade.” Doc explained, opening his jacket and untucking his shirt to look at the wound. “She’s a martial artist.”
“Didn’t help her when it mattered.” Boots muttered.
The French woman turned to her, “She taught you the boots trick, didn’t she?”
A slight sound made Avi look beyond the Doc to see the ponytailed thug he’d knocked out against the container running at Ling with bolt cutters over his head. Avi unsnapped his holster, drew his gun, and flipped off the safety in one move. He rolled to his side and brought the gun around to shoot the perp in the leg in a second move. Instead of falling to a side clutching his leg though, the man flew forward, the cutters flying from his hands to splash in the water. He fell dead beside Ling who didn’t move a muscle through the entire exchange.
“What the hell?” Avi rolled to his knees and despite the pain in his head and his chest, pushed Doc behind him. “Police!” he yelled. “Drop the weapon!”
“Kee?” A familiar voice hollered from the far side of the container.
“Davies?” Avi asked, lowering his weapon. “Come out. We need help.”
Clint Davies, an officer Avi would trust with his life stepped out holding his gun to the side. “What happened here?” he asked, taking in the scene.
Avi strode over to the thug and stuck two fingers on his neck. He looked at Ling, still staring into the rain. He glanced over at the girl who had hit him with her boots who was stuffing the padlocks into the little Indian girl’s backpack. He watched the European bather helping Doc to her feet and searched out over the water where he couldn’t even hear the motorboat anymore. He avoided sniffing the mix of outhouse, burning flesh, and car fuel in the air.
Standing, he caught Doc’s eyes and put a hand up to the back of his head.
“Kee? What happened here?” Davies asked again.
Avi dragged his eyes back to his fellow officer. He swallowed, trying to sort it all in his mind. Then he gave up.
“Would you believe it? I can’t remember.” His eyes flicked of their own accord to Boots. “I must have fallen and hit my head.”
Twenty-three
Tim stacked two more folded blue gym mats and shoved them together to form a soft bench right next to the fire extinguisher. He leaned against the wall and looked over at Kissy doing her thing behind the bar. Tim had laid out the cash for a Circus Freaks t-shirt and sweatpants. But there were no pants small enough for Kissy and she’d demanded he find her long sleeves so she was rocking a sparkly feathered long-sleeve cape and striped clown pants scrounged from the lost and found bin.
The rain still poured down on the tin roof far overhead but the chatter of rich old ladies had faded away when Kimberly Davis gave up on getting Tim in her bed and agreed to drive the last container woman to the bus station and buy her a ticket home.
“Come get your black cherry Manhattan.” Kissy set a classy rounded martini glass on the bar and popped the lid on a bottle of water for herself. The drink glowed in the light on an array of candles.
Tim’s head snapped to the back of the gym as the door flew open and bounced off the wall. He dropped into a crouch, ready to fight but Avi blew in looking like he’d just climbed out of the lake.
“Oh, baby.” Kissy dashed out from behind the little bar and ran over.
Tim joined them. He peered quickly at the weather outside, noticing the dock lights were still out up and down the waterfront. With Avi’s help, he pulled the door closed. Avi felt along the wall for any dents he’d caused.
“Where’s your coat?” Kissy asked.
Avi looked over her outfit and Tim saw the shadow of a smile cross his eyes. “One of the women was abducted in her bathing suit.”
“Where’s your car?” Tim asked.
“Oh,” The hinted at smile disappeared. “I think Vanessa tried to kill me again.”
Tim saw Kissy’s face go rigid, but no hand went up to feel the scar on her neck. “Looks like she didn’t do a very good job,” she observed.
Avi ran a hand over his nearly bald head, sluicing water away. “Well, my guess is the thugs tried to steal it.”
Tim threw his head back and laughed. “I love karma.”
But Kissy stepped forward and lifted the hem of Avi’s dripping blue sweater vest. She revealed an empty gun holster.
She asked, “Where’s your gun?”
“Left your badge on your coat?” Tim suggested hopefully.
Avi shook his head. “I’m suspended indefinitely or until I can explain what I was doing there.”
Tim looked around awkwardly. This messed up a few of his plans. Plus he knew how important the job was to Avi.
“Sorry man.”
Kissy murmured, “That was your most prized possession.”
“His gun?”
“The badge, you idiot.” Kissy hit Tim.
Tim scoffed, “Avi Kee doesn’t need a badge to show he stands for truth and justice.”
“And I don�
�t know if that’s what the badge stands for anymore.” Avi said quietly.
Kissy stood on her toes and pulled the man’s head down to kiss him. Then she turned and walked away.
“Get your clothes off,” she called over her shoulder, “I’ll mix you a well-earned drink.”
“No.” Avi called out, “I have a head wound.”
Kissy wheeled around and smiled at the boy scout. She wiggled her eyebrows at Tim. “He’s smarter than Evelyn.”
“Come on.” Tim took Avi into the equipment closet which they’d discovered had a washer and dryer.
Avi lifted the shoulder strap of Tim’s satchel over his head and set the dripping bag on top of the dryer. Tim squeezed a little water from the top flap and let it be.
“Thanks.”
“Is Evelyn okay?” Avi asked.
“Strip. I thought Crella was planning to kill her but it turned out he’d already done enough.”
As the big man undressed, Tim rifled through the Circus Freaks’ boxes of promotional supplies. The best he could find were large sweatpants and an extra large warm-up jacket. He was certain Avi would look like a monster in them. A large, muscular, sexy monster. Nothing he could do about that.
“She hurt herself?” Avi pressed.
“Head wound, whiskey, wine, and valium.” Tim held three fingers of his right hand up in a boy scout salute. “I didn’t know about the head wound when I gave her the alcohol.”
Avi turned away to pull on the sweatpants and voiced the obvious conclusion. “The ambulance we stole was here for her.”
“Yeah, but no worries.” Tim pulled Kissy’s stolen sweatshirt and mounds of warm silks from the dryer and replaced them with Avi’s dripping clothes. “Julia drove Evelyn and the Mets to the hospital. I just wish we could have found a way to return their ambulance.”
“We did.” Avi held the door to the equipment closet open for Tim. “A few of our prisoners took the ambulance to the hospital.”
“A few of our prisoners showed up here.” Kissy handed Avi a tall glass of amber liquid and a towel. “The ladies found it all very exciting. I wish I could make you something hot but the electricity went out. So an apple juice spritzer it is.”
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 25
