by Gregory Colt
* * * *
I smiled when I saw the small table sitting in front of the foot of the stairs with a note on it like I had left for Claire the morning before. Except this one was written in a more beautiful, flowing script with a lighter touch. Claire had left early to get coffee. Curious, I went back into the kitchen and found everything out ready to make waffles. I thought about going ahead and starting them when someone hammered on the front door. Claire probably had her hands full and was kicking it.
“Hold on already!” I hollered ahead of me. The door hammered again.
“Easy with the door!” I hollered again, reaching for the handle.
I opened the door and Detective John Harris lunged at my throat. My spidey senses must not have woken up yet because I just stood there. Which would have been bad, except Sheriff Clark grabbed him at the last second and hauled him back, flinging him off my porch. I’ve mentioned my respect for the good sheriff right?
“Sheriff? What’s all this about?” I asked genuinely confused.
“Adrian Knight,” he said, glancing back at Harris for a moment. “You’re under arrest for the kidnapping of Claire Spurling.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The clattering boom of the bars reverberated off the cinder block walls of the cell. It didn’t even have a window.
“I’ve got you now you son of a bitch,” Harris said, glaring so hard I thought it might manifest into a physical object.
I ignored him. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I learned on the ride there that questions would be met with his fist in my mouth. Which sucked enough all by itself, but really I just wanted to keep from moving so the wounds on my wrists didn’t reopen because of the—you guessed it—handcuffs. This was not my best week.
Claire had been kidnapped. That was all I knew. She drove my car into town, parked outside the diner, and someone grabbed her. Damn it! Who in the hell would have done that? No, who in the hell would have done it that knew where she was? The only name on that list I could think of was mine. Shit.
“Detective, you will kindly leave my prisoner alone,” Sheriff Clark said from behind his desk.
Harris rounded on him. “Or what?”
“Or, I’ll break your nose,” he said.
“Excuse me? Did I just hear you right, Sheriff? How dare you threaten me! If you knew the things this man,” he indicated me, “had done, what he was accused of doing, you would have shot him the day he walked into town and saved everyone the trouble.”
“Are you telling me how to do my job?” Clark asked.
“Apparently somebody has to. You don’t know this man like I do. He’s a killer. A worthless piece of trash. He doesn’t belong here. He doesn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t give a good goddamn what you think, because you’re out of your league here. This is my jurisdiction.”
“Not yet it isn’t. I said I’d bring him in and hold him until one of your judges came through with a warrant to search his place. And if—if, mind you—you find anything, then he’s part of your investigation and you can take him into the city. Not one second sooner.”
“You dumb shit local throwing your weight around.”
Sheriff Clark just nodded.
Harris snorted before turning back to me. “When my boys get here you’re going to talk you piece of shit.”
“You haven’t bothered asking me any questions yet. What the hell are you waiting around for? It’s Claire. While you’re in here dicking around, indulging your hatred of me, she’s getting farther and farther away,” I shot back.
“No!” he hammered the bars with his fist. “No. It’s you. I don’t know how, but I know it’s you. The museum, the stolen artifacts, the Concordia and stolen arms shipment, the FBI, Claire, you’re connected to all of it. You, and how you’ve been running around on your own the last couple of days doing god knows what. It’s you.”
“Damn it, Harris, what possible reason would I have for hurting Claire. Think, man! Every second we waste here is another second she loses. What do you think she was doing in town to begin with? If I was going to do something why wait for the morning, and in town no less, when she spent the last two nights at my place.” Which was way the wrong damn thing to say.
The man was white lightning, bolting to Clark’s desk and grabbing the keys to my cell. He whipped around and I saw his red face go nearly purple. He ground his teeth hard enough to hear, then charged the door, slamming the key in, unlocking it, and shoving it aside so hard chips of concrete flew from where it struck the wall.
Ah, crap.
He charged in a berserking frenzy and I did the one thing everyone seems to forget…I stepped to the side.
Harris swung blindly, with all his weight behind it, right where I had been a split second before. Now there was nothing but air, and the cinder block wall. Maybe it says something about the kind of weekend I had, but I fully expected his fist to punch right through it in a huge cloud of dust and shards. It didn’t.
He howled in pain, but didn’t slow down. Harris slid toward me and fired a kick deep into my right hip that sent me spinning to the floor. I curled as best I could to protect myself from the kick I knew was coming for my ribs, or my head, and was reminded my hands were cuffed behind me. One well-placed boot and that would be it. No more Adrian Knight.
Of course that meant Claire would be left to suffer and be discarded, Ruby as well, and everyone responsible getting away with it. Fuck that.
I attempted to mentally block all the pain that would come from moving around on my handcuffed wrists pinned beneath me, failed, and spun around anyway, extending my leg out hard, catching Harris in the shin mid-kick, causing him to stumble.
A loud crash filled the cell like a bell struck right next to me. Blood sprayed from Harris’s nose as he fell backward onto the floor. Sheriff Clark stood behind him with his elbow still held from where he’d slammed it into the back of Harris’s head and into the bars. It was almost the exact same thing I’d done two nights ago outside of Nick’s.
“Well, you’ve got my vote,” I said, trying to roll over onto my knees. Clark hooked his arm under me and picked me up.
“Cheaper than running a campaign,” he said, helping me out of the cell.
He grabbed his keys and shut the cell behind him. He left Detective Harris inside.
“Would you mind?” I asked, turning around to indicate my handcuffs.
Clark ignored me and sat back down at his desk.
“Sit down, Adrian.”
I sat. “So, I’m not free to go then?”
“Not hardly. So far the only proof of anything I’ve seen with good evidence, one way or the other, is that Detective Harris is an asshole.”
I wisely kept my mouth shut.
“What in the hell is going on here?” he glared at me.
I liked Clark, I did, but there were still too many things it wouldn’t do anyone any good him knowing. I told him what I could involving the murders at the museum and looking for Ruby, though.
“And we went to bed late last night. Separately,” I said when he arched an eyebrow. “I woke and came downstairs. There was a note from Claire saying she’d taken the car into town to grab coffee. I went into the kitchen and found everything ready to make breakfast. That’s when you knocked at the door. I thought it was her.”
He nodded, taking time to process all of it.
“Look, if you don’t believe me, you can run by the house and see for yourself. I need to be out there looking for her,” I said, leaning forward.
“Unless you staged it.”
“Why? I mean let’s forget about the fact I would never do anything like that anyway, and assume I’m the devil everyone thinks I am.”
Clark nodded.
“Claire spent all night there. No one knew she was there. If I were going to do something, it would have been in the night, not in the middle of town after dawn. Listen, I need to find her. Now. There isn’t time for anything else.”
“Who else mig
ht have taken her if not you?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They would have to know where she was. Had to have followed her, us, and wait for morning. I don’t know who. We haven’t exactly ran around making friends the last two days. It could be anyone.”
“But not you?”
“No.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean you know?”
“Waitress at the diner this morning saw the whole thing. Claire bought the drinks and was grabbed going back out to your car by a man that wasn’t you. Wasn’t Djimon either. Waitress would have recognized either of you.”
“So you knew it wasn’t me and brought me in anyway?” I stood hollering. “Do you know how much time—”
“Sit. Down.”
I didn’t this time.
“Adrian, I told you to be careful. You have a past. You have enemies. I’m not the kind to hold that against a man without good reason, but Harris was right. Lot of things point to you. Too much for coincidence.”
I sighed but couldn’t calm down. Someone had taken Claire. Someone followed me to my home and took Claire. I was going to take her back.
“I’m not claiming it’s a coincidence. I am involved. I’m investigating for the museum and have ran into some major players. Not a stretch things went bad.”
“Maybe, but you’re missing an angle here,” Clark said in more of a lecturing tone.
It was my turn to arch an eyebrow at him. I guess Claire was rubbing off on me.
“The missing girl.”
“Ruby Jordan?”
He nodded. “That’s what you’ve spent most of your time working on sounds like. Almost all of it, in fact. Everything you’ve done working on the museum case the police have done as well and there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary going on with them. Only difference is the girl.”
“That doesn’t mean anything, though. No one would act directly against the police. Not so overt anyway. Claire and I are easier targets.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You’re still missing something. You said you’re worried about major players in the city, only reason they’d bother is if you were interfering. Since all you’re doing is looking into a theft at the museum and a missing girl in the Bronx…” he said, holding his hands up.
“They’re connected,” I thought out loud. I tried processing that line of thinking. “Maybe not directly to each other, but to everything else going on. The big stuff. Claire said a major joint operation was getting ready to go down soon. A major offensive effort by the city to curb the growing drug war between Diamond Jack and Vitale. That’s the heart of it. That’s what has everyone on edge. The war is about to get white hot and pieces are being moved around the board. Damn it! Jack said as much yesterday morning.” It made sense. It felt right.
Clark leaned forward in his seat, surprised. “You spoke to Diamond Jack?”
“Not by choice. He stopped outside the medical examiner’s office while we were there and wanted to have a chat about what we knew. Even offered us a job.”
Marion Clark whistled. “Boy, you don’t do things by halves do you? All right, so you need to find the connection between the museum and the rest of it. The drugs, Jack, Vitale, something, and pull the strings apart from there.”
“Yes, but first Claire.”
“That I can help with. Some anyway.”
“Waitress give a description?”
He winked at me. “Caucasian male, five foot six or seven, donut ring of greasy hair pulled into a ponytail, plaid suit, smoking a cigarette. Sound like anyone you know?”
I slammed my fist on his desk hard enough to knock his glass ashtray off onto the floor.
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Clark said, bending over and picking up the ashtray, inspecting it for chips or cracks before setting it down.
“Sleazy bastard eyeing Claire yesterday morning outside the examiner’s office. One of Jack’s men. ”
“Can’t trust a crime lord who can you trust, right?” Clark said, walking around behind me. He undid my cuffs and threw them on the desk.
I went to the sink and washed my wrists. “Going to be hell to pay for this.”
“Bah, I’m too old to worry about that. Get the girl. I can take care of the city cops for a while. But Adrian, don’t go in all hot and bothered or you’ll both get dead.
You’re getting in over your depth. Got to be smart about it. You should take Djimon with you, Nick too. Hell, something like this, you should call agent Coughlin.”
“Nick’s out of town and Djimon has responsibilities here if something goes wrong.” He didn’t know I wasn’t out of my depth. These were waters I’d learned to swim a long time ago.
I dried my hands and came back out. “All I need are my car keys,” I said. He tossed them to me. “And those wide leather wristbands you took off at my place,” he tossed those over as well. Thank goodness for the paranoid ritual of getting dressed first thing each morning. “And someone that knows where to find Diamond Jack,” I said, putting the cushioned leather cuffs back on. My wrists instantly felt better. Thanks Claire.
“It’s Sunday morning. He’ll be at The Piazza, in Midtown,” Clark said without hesitation.
That begged all kinds of questions, but it would have to wait.
“Thanks,” I said.
He reached out and shook my hand. “Luck, son.”
I left and ran down the sidewalk until crossing the street to the diner where my car was. I didn’t have time to run by the house, but Nick and I had a war bag hidden in the office. It was on the way.
Then I was going to Jack’s to huff and puff and blow his goddamn house down.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thirty minutes later I slammed the brakes, fishtailing the Chevelle’s back end onto to the curb in front of the big double doors to The Piazza. They were chained shut. Clark was certain Jack would be there, but either way I wanted a look for myself. He’d crossed a line. If this is how he wanted to play, then game-the-fuck-on.
I jumped out of the car, popped the trunk, and grabbed the chain I’d brought from Nick’s, latched one end to the car’s frame underneath and wrapped the other around the chain on the doors. I hopped back in the car and floored the accelerator. My rear tires barked , filling the rearview mirror with smoke. The car lurched forward in an ear-splitting eruption behind me as the doors exploded from the wall, crashing out into the street.
I shut her down in the middle of the road and grabbed my war bag. I’d left the heavy equipment behind. Situation was delicate until I knew Claire was safe and out of the way, so I pulled out the ball-peen hammer. Don’t laugh. I once saw a bar room cleared with a cue ball in a sock. The hammer was tactical. It was also only three bucks at the hardware store.
I walked up the steps and through the entrance I’d made and I wasn’t stopping until I found Jack.
Blood red carpet filled the front room all the way down the hall straight ahead where two men came through the door at the end to check out the noise from what used to be the front door. A loud dance beat reverberated in the darkness beyond the door before the men shut it behind them. Both wore black pants, shoes, gloves, tie and an off-white jacket. I noticed their bright red handkerchiefs folded into perfect diamonds.
They stopped and stared. Guess Diamond Jack didn’t get many walk-ins.
“Hi guys. I’m here to see Jack. I don’t have an appointment,” I continued towards them.
The taller of the two started to say, “What the fu—” when the other drew his gun from his shoulder holster.
I sprinted forward the moment the tall guy opened his mouth and cleared the distance before the short one’s gun left his vest.
I struck the back of his hand with the hammer, sending the gun flying behind ugly fake shrubbery, and followed with a hard snap of my left boot into the others groin, doubling him over. As I planted my left foot, I brought the butt of the handle down on the back of his head with a solid thud. He dropped as I spun t
he opposite direction, where the shorter man was going for the gun he’d dropped, and struck him in the kneecap with a sickening crunch that sent him to the ground.
I whipped the hammer back and forth between the two men, working my way from shins and knees to elbows and wrists.
The two men were left writhing on the floor after six seconds. I slid the hammer into my belt then reached into the tall man’s jacket. I drew his gun out, dropped the magazine, disengaged the slide, and took it apart, dropping the pieces to the floor. I walked over his short friend, grabbed his gun, and did the same.
The tall one sat up and leaned against the wall looking grim.
I tapped the hammer at my side. “Might want to give it a minute, you know?”
He flexed his hand and winced, nodding his head.
I had to give Jack credit. His boys were smarter than most. I filed that information in the back of my mind. Then I kicked in the door.
The only light came from torches burning on marble columns centered around a raised sitting area near the middle with several leather couches occupied with a dozen men or so. Above was a series of large, tinted glass panes that muted the noon sun. The panes looked retractable. I bet they opened after dark.
It was difficult to see more than three or four feet in front of me outside the light, but I could hear several fountains bubbling. I suspected the stone floor was marble as well. It really would resemble a small piazza with the roof off.
Someone killed the music before I’d gone two steps. Half the couches cleared like a dugout charging the mound. No doubt who the pitcher was in that analogy.
I drew my hammer and danced low, darting among them as they came at me, careful to avoid getting entangled in hands and arms. Shins cracked, kneecaps shattered, ankles busted, and toes were flattened before I stepped onto the dais and into the light.
“Jack, we need to—” I started to say. Sleazy ponytail guy sat on the couch furthest from me with eyes so wide they reminded me of the bull’s eye on a target. So, that’s where I aimed. I hurled the hammer like a Norse god and it smashed into his nose with a gout of blood, driving his head back into the leather like a pile driver. A pile driver to the face.
