Lawless Measures: Vigilante - The Fight Continues

by Lyle O'Connor

  Silently I ejected the magazine from my Glock and stripped the remaining two rounds out, then slipped it empty into my front pants pocket. I reloaded my weapon with another fifteen-rounds of opportunity. Ready to continue the action, I reached over the file cabinet, let two quick rounds fly toward the end of the hallway. They returned fire. I pulled the empty magazine from my pocket and dropped it on the tile floor. A tinny-twang echoed in the absence of gunfire. To further get their attention, I followed up with a couple cuss words. Maybe they thought I was in the middle of reloading when the magazine hit the floor. I’ll never know. Whatever they thought they acted on it and sealed their fate. Both thugs ran down the short hallway and into the office with weapons blazing. They turned toward the counter where they expected me to be hiding. It was a truly brave and bold move on their part. It was also very stupid. They were dead wrong. From behind the metal filing cabinet I shot them in the back. Some might consider my ambush to be a cowardly act. I’m an assassin. I was there to kill mobsters. Anyway I could.

  I crept down the hall and listened for noise. I had cleared the bathroom and back office before I went to find the money. I didn’t know when the Mob planned to pick up the drop at the cargo office, but my wait time was limited. With cell phone capabilities, the pickup could be called off, or an army of mobsters might be on their way. I had no qualms with more notches added to my .40-caliber, but it wasn’t a smart move to wait.

  I grabbed the canvas bag full of loot and headed out the front door. I called to Bludd, and we jumped in the Tahoe and headed to our motel room.

  “This was a major slap in the face” I said.

  Bludd smiled a big toothy grin.

  Chapter 14

  “The criminal justice system is a misnomer. It should be called the victim justice system, maybe then they’d have their priorities right”

  —Walter

  We arrived at the hut where Kuhl had set up operations. He had a few items of interest spread out in the tiny office space, but when I asked, he said, “We’ll get to them shortly.” Bludd and I were excited to fill Kuhl in on what transpired at the cargo office.

  “We killed Rizzi and took the Drop,” Bludd said, still sporting the wide toothy grin. I noticed there wasn’t much that didn’t make him smile.

  “Cool.” Kuhl said.

  I chimed in, “Besides Rizzi, you can up the body count by three more.”

  “Wow, you guys did have a good day,” said Kuhl.

  We started the count on the canvas bag, and it turned out better that we had imagined.

  “Eighty-grand, give or take a few thousand,” Bludd said.

  “Hey, that’s great news,” I told Bludd. “It won’t cripple them for long, but it’ll stir up a hornet’s nest. We’ll have to take it further.” No one disagreed. The problem, as I saw it, was police pulled off raids, confiscated their property and drug money, but then they’d go soft on them. They should have brought the hammer down over and over, year after year—but they didn’t. The cops constantly chased their own tails. It was as if they had to balance their attacks between the different gangland elements to be fair. Rival gangs did likewise; they’d pull off some caper, take some territory, then laid back and tried to work their profits. The Mob would retaliate, tit for tat. The Palatini strategy had no such equivalent measures. With the Mob it was always about the money. We needed to hit the Machine, as fast and often as possible.

  “We need to hurt them in the pocket book,” I said, “where they are going to feel it.” No one thought differently.

  “I’m amazed at how much y’all are able to accomplish without using technology from this century,” Kuhl said.

  “Funny,” I said. “Not everyone is trained in black ops or has these electronic toys to help them. Some of us operate with our guts and a sense of right and wrong.” I paused briefly, “So, you’ll just have to be amazed at our success.”

  “Y’all do good. I give you credit for that. Maybe I can show you a couple pieces of equipment that y’all can find a use for in the future,” Kuhl said.

  “That works for me,” I said. “What about Pembroke?”

  “His car has been parked at his residence. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t gone any place. Only his car hasn’t. I called his office; he’s not expected at work this week. Let’s assume he’s put the word out about the farmhouse incident to his Mob family, but he’s not using his car. He might think it’s too risky to drive it around. I wouldn’t put it past Pembroke to use his influence to misdirect the police away from De Luca. They were his boys and the police likely know who’s affiliated with whom.” Kuhl said.

  “When you think about it, Pembroke had his hands in a lot of the mess. He’s made the cops ineffective. I think that little raid I saw the other day was staged. It meant nothing. It might have been to protect a few of these mobsters. Pembroke didn’t know who or where we were. He only knew through Max we were here,” I said.

  “It’s a good bet, mate, if it hadn’t been for the likes of Pembroke, the Machine would have been eaten’ alive by other gangs. They’re like bleeding piranha in the underworld,” Bludd said.

  “I don’t have anything against cops,” I said, “but I do with the whole idea of justice. The criminal justice system is a misnomer. It should be called the victim justice system, maybe then they’d have their priorities right.” To me, the criminal justice system didn’t represent justice at all. The system was self-evident and apparent; the laws were about criminals’ rights, not victim’s rights.

  I knew I was preaching to the choir. The whole legal system was too impersonal; victims were nothing more than nameless statistics on a piece of paper that ended up logged into a computer. The law was itself too imperfect; the concept of punishment was non-existent, and had been replaced by reform. It was now entrenched as a bureaucratic fallacy and propagated by every two-bit Harry that came along with a psychobabble degree. They knew damn good-and-well there were types of criminal behavior that could not be reformed or ever trusted in society again, but that’s where the money was. These political pimps were as much about greed as was the Mob. The system needed an overhaul of common sense to combat the growing onslaught of liberal mindsets. One-by-one, citizens learned the hard way. Never trust the lawmakers and liberal judges to lead the fight for justice. They were as much of the problem as they were the solution. It was up to ordinary citizens, like Walter, to provide the people’s response, the proper response; one and the same.

  “Check this out.” Kuhl said. He laid on the table several handheld radios with wireless headsets. “When you work with others, it’s nice to be able to coordinate a strike.” Then he held up two vests and said, “These are ballistic vests. Some people call them concealable body armour. They can be handy in a shootout. Walter you’d take an extra-large, Bludd you’d need two of the biggest ones I have.” Kuhl threw one to each of us and said, “Try’em on.” I’d fit into the one he pitched to me. Bludd shimmied to get into his triple-extra-large vest. Kuhl picked up a weapon and said, “Have you seen one of these before?”

  “Yeah, I carried one for a while, I said. “It’s an M79 Grenade Launcher.”

  “That’s right. It’s lightweight, extremely quiet, and easy to deploy the weapon for when you want the value of an explosive round at a distance of more than thirty-meters,” Kuhl said while he dug through a green military ammo canister with his right hand and retrieved a couple grenade rounds. He held up a pair of 40mm HE (High Explosive) rounds which I’d had some experience with in the military. “It’s yours,” Kuhl said, “I picked up a case of them. They were leftovers from ‘Nam when they replaced them with the M203.”

  “Modernizing is a good thing,” Bludd said as he continued to struggle with the fit of his body armour.

  “What about Pembroke?” I asked.

  “We have communications, and I can run the vehicle tracking from my van. We should relocate to the Canadian side,” Kuhl said.

  “Let’s go for a visual op,” I said. “Kuh
l, your van won’t cut it. Those four short antennas make it look like a spy rig.” Pembroke had seen my Avenger at the farm; it would be a dead give-away if we were seen in it. We had one viable option left short of another rental. “Bludd,” I called out. “It’ll have to be your rattle-trap.”

  We loaded up the Tahoe and were ready to roll-out before dawn the next morning. That night we made pallets on the office floor, relaxed, and mulled over people, names, and places we’d hoped and intended to encounter. As we chattered back and forth, I got nostalgic with memories of my Thailand trip. Anna and I had lain on the beach and drank spiked fruit drinks with little umbrellas in them. We flew from there to Italy and walked the Romanesque streets of Bellagio and dined in the richest atmosphere imaginable. The life of an assassin; it seemed promising, but it was nothing like that. When the window dressing had been peeled away, what was left wasn’t exotic or glamorous at all. The life was in reality a cold, isolated existence that required an assassin to wallow in the filth of humanity to extract a necessary vengeance. Tomorrow would be another day, a new dawn, and nothing to look forward to, except death. Mine or theirs; it was no matter.

  It was sunny and cold at seven in the morning. We cranked the Tahoe. It moaned and groaned as it came alive. Kuhl had plugged in his block heater on his van. When he started it, it responded more lively. I said goodbye to the Avenger; as much as I hated to leave it, it had to sit this round out.

  Kuhl had gotten the jump on us. By seven-fifteen, he was en route to Vaughan in North Toronto. Pembroke’s Beemer had been parked at a residence just off Keele Street. Bludd and I planned to take his Tahoe and check out Musolino’s. Bludd favoured the plan the way I’d outlined it. I would monitor the outside area and keep a watch over the parking lot while Bludd grabbed some grub inside.

  Capo De Luca had a Davenport Road address in Corso Italia near Musolino’s. The other big cheese in the area were Marco Camerota, the would-be capo of Toronto’s east end, he lived on East Danforth. Pembroke’s car hadn’t gone to either of those residences. Where he had gone and what he had done, remained a mystery. What I did know was he was in the same boat I was in. His car was easily recognized by us. It wasn’t safe for him to drive it around. He probably had the same thought.

  The phone rang. “The Beemer’s on the move,” Kuhl said, “it’s heading south into Toronto. Let’s get eyes on.”

  Bludd was in the diner, when I called. I’d never been one to talk much on a phone, and Bludd knew that, so his attention was immediately aroused.

  “Rock and roll time,” I said.

  A minute later, Bludd leapt into the Tahoe with his raviolis in a to-go box and said. “What are you waiting for, mate?”

  I brought my partner up to speed as I drove. He nodded, as I talked, and gobbled down his leftovers. I tossed him the phone and said, “Make use of it.”

  “I asked about your Joyce.”

  “She’s not mine. She’s a good gal, and she needs a break in life to show the world she has the grit to make it.”

  “Well, she’s gone already.”

  “Good,” I said as I glanced at Bludd. A lopsided smile drifted across his face.

  “I’m glad she’s made it out of Musolino’s,” I said in a sharp tone as if I’d planned to argue the point.

  Bludd’s smile widened and appeared permanently planted on his face, like a rat that got away from a trap with the cheese. “I’m sure you are, mate.” The phone interrupted our discourse about Joyce. Bludd gave a couple of uhhuh’s and a nod the caller had not been able to see. “Got it,” Bludd said and disconnected the call. We continued north while I repeatedly glanced at my partner, who wasn’t very forthcoming. We had the tool for communication; we needed to learn to use them more efficiently.

  “Well.” I waited for a response.

  “The Beemer stopped at a grid coordinate on Kingston Road, in Pickering. Take Saint Clair Avenue East, get on Highway 401, and take the Brock Road exit. Kuhl will be there before us. He’ll give us a heads up when we get to the area.”

  It was six in the evening and traffic was snarled at its worst with commuters. I hated traffic at this time of the day; unless I’d planned to knock someone off, then traffic was good. I could stay hidden until I struck and then blend back into traffic and disappear from sight. We had more than twenty miles to travel to get to Pickering. Another hour dragged by as we jockeyed our way to our rendezvous. As we drew near, this time Bludd placed the call and turned on the speaker, so I could get the goods first hand, and not filter through him.

  “It’s a swank nightclub,” Kuhl said. “The name on the place is Reservations. There are a few street-side stores with a long continuous parking area across from the nightclub. I’m in front of Wyman Hardware.”

  “We’ll be there soon.” I said.

  We spotted the van and pulled in next to it. Kuhl came up to the driver’s window and said, “I’ll go in and check out the scene. Don’t mess with the Beemer; I’ve rigged it to blow. It’s parked on the side of the nightclub.”

  We ran through a description of Pembroke with Kuhl. We included the tidbit that he might show signs of being recently pulverized, and the possibility he might cover it up. Kuhl made his way across the street while Bludd and I hunkered down—for how long was anybody’s guess. Fifteen minutes later we got a call.

  “He’s here and has a couple ladies at his table. I think it’s noticeable he’s taken a beating. It’s dark in the club, and this chump has on sunglasses and a ball cap,” Kuhl said. “He ain’t foolin’ anybody with that get-up.”

  “Okay, I want him alive.” I said. It was in all our best interests not to get trigger happy, especially with the plastic explosives. I wanted this guy to talk, and if he wouldn’t, I’d make him pay for his silence. Extra.

  Kuhl called a couple more times to keep us in the loop. It was appreciated. I kept telling Bludd, “See, that’s the way communications work.” But he ignored me. Kuhl related his observations. Pembroke had sucked down eight stiff drinks over the past couple hours, and he was hammered, according to Kuhl. He’d walked with a drunken stagger to the restroom the last couple times he was up. In the past thirty minutes, he had two guys join him at his table. They had run the ladies off. There were some eye shots around the room and some quiet, whispering type conversation amongst them.

  I’d known criminals like Pembroke. I didn’t know them long, but I did know them well. I might have known them longer, but because I knew them well—they were dead. Criminal behavior didn’t bother Pembroke in the least. Even when it was his own. He could go to his home, mingle with family, go out to a movie, and continue his social life like nothing vile had ever happened in his world. Yet, he aided and abetted every racket the Mob ran and every crime the Mob committed. Whether it was murder or human trafficking of children, he supported it by his actions. I’d planned to interrupt his routine criminal life.

  Pembroke was a coward like all other mobsters. Sure, I knew some of them were tough physically, but that didn’t mean they weren’t cowards. The brave were the kids that were prisoners in the Mob’s makeshift brothels. Children were subjected to a life that was no choice of their own. Their only apparent means of escape was death, but they refused. Instilled in them through nature was the instinct to survive. And it made them brave. It was up to me and others like me, to free them. Since politicians and lawyers protected the Mob’s rights to enslave people in human trafficking, I took the right to kill every last one of them. I held each and every member of the crime family responsible, the whole cowardly bunch.

  As I thought about my second meeting with Pembroke, Bludd asked, “Why didn’t he run?”

  “He knows.”

  Bludd asked, “He knows what, mate?”

  “He sees us as criminal just as he is, and he’s right. We won’t call 9-1-1. So—why not surround yourself with muscle and hope for the best outcome.” Bludd nodded in silence.

  It was another call and another update. “They’re coming out. Pembroke i
s with them, and the ladies too,” Kuhl said. They emerged and stood in a group for a few minutes in front of the club. They then moved in separate directions. One female walked with Pembroke to his Beemer. I was concerned, if he got behind the wheel, he might kill himself—and that was too cheap. His female companion loaded him into the passenger’s seat and then climbed in behind the Beemer’s steering wheel.

  She wasn’t a bad looking gal, but she wasn’t a head-turner either. She had a remarkably pretty build for being hidden inside an oversized dark-grey, hooded, full length coat. She stood around five-foot five without her two-inch heels and wore dark slacks. She looked business like, kind of classy, with her coal-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She sat behind the wheel and warmed the car before she slipped it into reverse, backed out and headed south.

  Bludd and I trailed the Beemer while Kuhl held a good distance back. His van might be well equipped, but it was easily spotted. We travelled for twenty minutes south on Highway 401, hung a left and were back on Kingston Road. The Beemer turned into a motel parking lot and pulled into space twenty-nine. It was a sure bet she’d been there before. The space corresponded with the same number on a ground floor door, which they entered. Pembroke’s escort was tucked neatly under one of his wings as she assisted him over the threshold. We cruised through the lot and parked in the area marked overflow. Kuhl parked by the main road.

  The motel lobby and office area was a two-story structure with two single level wings that jetted out in opposite directions. Twenty-nine was an end unit on the west side. It was likely the escort’s place of business. I might have been mistaken. She might have been his girlfriend, a friend, a Good Samaritan, or maybe plain neighbourly. However, my gut instinct was she was a hooker.

  Kuhl joined up with us on the west end of the parking area. We prepped to enter by force. At door twenty-nine, I took centre stage, Kuhl and Bludd on either side. Each of us with our weapons hidden under our jackets, moderators and silencers attached, and bug-out bags in hand. The door was not equipment with a spy-hole-security viewer. Not uncommon in 1940s construction.