For the moment, I had to put it out of my mind that my only paying clients were now dead. But I couldn’t help feeling cut adrift. “And if I refuse?”
“You don’t want to do a thing like that,” cautioned the goon, warming up one ham-fist in the palm of the other. “People don’t say no to Mr. Ivan … and live.”
The Russian cleared a gob of phlegm from his throat—he hadn’t covered his microphone, wherever he was broadcasting from. “Find me this girl, Mr. Madison. Show me what a fine detective you are. I will watch your progress with keen interest.”
He nodded to Mikhel, and what came next was a whole lot of nothing, so much black I could dive right in and fall forever—
* * *
When I came to, drooling onto the carpet with daylight streaming in the window, I was instantly aware of two things. One: the left side of my face felt like it had gained an extra pound overnight. Two: I wasn’t alone.
“Good morning, Mr. Madison,” said the slight, well-dressed man of fifty-something as he handed me an ice pack from my mini fridge—a must for any self-respecting bachelor living out of his office. “This should help with the swelling.”
“Thanks.” I applied it to where I’d been clobbered. “And who are you, exactly?”
“I am your driver, Mr. Madison.”
“I don’t have a driver,” I mumbled. “I don’t even own a car.”
“Well, that may be so, but Mr. Ivan has seen to it that—”
I cursed under my breath.
“He believes you may wish to take a drive outside the city limits today. To Little Tokyo, perhaps?”
If this was Ivan’s way of pointing me in the right direction, it was a bit heavy-handed. It only made sense that I would need to brave Yakuza syndicate territory to learn about Mao’s backstory. I didn’t need a driver on Ivan’s payroll to take me there. Plenty of cab companies had no problems carting citizens outside the city, as long as they got paid plenty. But if Ivan was covering the fare this morning, there’d be no need for me to dip into that two hundred I’d gotten from the late Mr. and Mrs. Jarhead. I patted my breast pocket. The wad was still there.
“Mr. Madison?” The chauffeur watched me closely.
“What’s your name, James?”
“Uh … my name is James, sir.”
“You don’t say?” I allowed half a grin and checked my shoulder holster. The revolver had returned. But was it still loaded?
“Sir?” James looked a little wide-eyed as I drew the weapon and flipped out the barrel to check its chambers. All six rounds were right where they belonged.
“Got a phone in your car?” I holstered the gun and tossed my ice pack into the fridge.
“Yes, of course,” James said.
“Then let’s go.”
Outside, sunshine gleamed from the wet streets and steam quivered in the morning light, but plenty of charcoal-colored clouds waited thick and heavy in the wings. At the curb waited a shiny new Olds with a phone mounted between the front seats on a rear-facing partition. Modern technology at its best.
My first call went straight to police headquarters where one of the last honest cops in town, Sergeant Archibald Douglass, answered after the third ring. James the Chauffeur glanced up at me in the rearview mirror with a question mark wrinkled on his forehead, and I told him just to drive for now. It didn’t matter where.
“Charlie lad, how goes it?” Douglass greeted me in his thick Scottish brogue. “A wee early in the day, isn’t it?”
“No rest for the wicked.” I listened to him chuckle but didn’t wait for it to die down. Douglass knew the city was going into the crapper and there was little he or anybody else could do about it, but that never seemed to dampen his spirits. “I’ve got a tip for you. A double homicide.”
Douglass cleared his throat and spoke low into the receiver. “Is that so?”
I glanced up at the rearview, but James’ eyes remained on the road. “Check the river.” Ivan’s usual dumping ground—where the city’s acid runoff collected to flow unhindered. Made it tough to identify bodies after a day or so in the corrosive water. With most of the city’s cops on his payroll, he had no reason to alter his modus operandi.
“And I know better than to ask how you came by this information.”
He had that right. “You might want to check on Cauliflower Carl as well.” I frowned as the thought came to me: “And Mr. Newspaper.” Nobody was safe—not if they’d been seen with me in the past twenty-four hours.
“You got it, Charlie.” He paused. “You in a tight spot? Need some backup?”
It was the thought that counted. I knew better than to think anybody else would ever have my back in this town. “I’ll talk to you soon. Call me—“ I spoke up to James: “What’s the number here?” He rattled it off, and I relayed it to Sergeant Douglass.
“I’ll get back to you soon as I can, Charlie,” Douglass signed off.
I returned the phone to its cradle. James glanced back at me. He’d heard the whole thing, obviously—and so had Ivan. More likely than not, the Russian had this line tapped.
“To Little Tokyo, Mr. Madison?”
I gave him a nod.
Ever since the Great Diaspora, when the Eastern Conglomerate started expanding their borders, encroaching into what once had been the sovereign nations of Japan and Mother Russia, there had been a steady stream of immigrants flowing into the Unified States. Most came down through the Alaskan oil fields and were put to work there. Of course the government welcomed them with open arms, always in favor of increasing the population; when you were up against China and her allies in a global conflict, numbers sure as hell mattered. Not all of the new citizens liked the idea of being assigned backbreaking work in order to fuel their mighty protector’s war machine, so many filtered south. But due to prevailing anti-Asian sentiments, the Japanese were not welcomed in the same way as the Russians. They were forced to create their own townships—slums really, just outside the major cities. Most of the time, they minded their own business, and the rest of the city left them alone. A working arrangement of sorts.
But Little Tokyo was avoided by most citizens who valued their lives.
I knew it would buy me some time, driving all the way out of the city through morning traffic, and I had some major thinking to do. Things were coming to a head; I could feel it. Soon I’d have to make a major play. but for now, I slid back my sleeve and set my watch—a special gift from an old acquaintance who happened to make his home in Little Tokyo.
Moving at a snail’s pace along the congested streets, I eventually heard back from Sergeant Douglass. He verified all that I’d already surmised to be the case—and the news wasn’t good. I tapped James on the shoulder as I hung up on the honest cop.
“Turn us around.” I felt like I’d been punched in the gut, but I kept my face from showing it. It was time to make my move.
“Mr. Madison?” The driver glanced over his shoulder at me in confusion. We were just minutes away from the Little Tokyo border.
“Take me to The Coliseum instead.”
The man did as he was told—even though he obviously had his reservations about it, and we headed back the way we’d come through traffic oozing in the opposite direction.
* * *
I should have known better than to think I’d walk right in the front door of the massive casino, modeled after an ancient Roman edifice where Christians and other undesirables were torn apart for the enjoyment of the masses. The two thugs out front looked like actual gladiators stuffed into their monkey suits, and by all appearances, they could have been Mikhel’s twin brothers.
“We ain’t open, Mister,” one of them said.
“Tell Ivan that Charlie Madison is here, and he’s found the girl.”
The goons frowned at each other and muttered something into each other’s ear, taking turns like girls at a party. Then the one who’d already spoken scoffed, “Yeah? And who the hell is Charlie Madison?”
Maybe they weren�
��t related to Mikhel after all, because their reflexes were nothing at all like his. I’d already drawn my revolver, shot the mouthy one in the leg and aimed it at the quieter one before they even seemed to realize what was going down.
“Give Ivan my message,” I said. James the chauffeur had frozen with both hands over his mouth, but I didn’t buy it. A fellow doesn’t drive for Ivan the Terrible without seeing more than his share of crazy mayhem on a regular basis. “Go!” When the quiet goon had disappeared inside, leaving the thick set of doors to swing shut behind him, I trained my gun on the mouthy one. “Don’t try anything cute, pal.”
He had his meaty hands on his thigh, applying pressure as blood spurted up through his fingers. “I’m gonna bleed to death here!”
“What’s my name?”
He blinked at me. “Charlie … Madison?”
“Don’t you forget it.” I winked at his bewildered expression, and I’m sure I didn’t look the greatest with the swelling I had going on.
“I’m bleeding out!”
James stepped forward to lend a hand and a handkerchief, but I held him back. “It was a clean shot, straight through.”
“You hit bone, jackass!” the goon groaned.
“Sorry.” I released James to do whatever he could to help. There was a time when my aim had been a whole lot better.
An intercom speaker above the doors clicked on, and the deep voice of the Russian I’d met last night via his mandroid came through loud and clear: “Mr. Madison, why are you shooting my men? Trying to play the cowboy again?” A thick chuckle.
James turned to face me just as the double doors swung open and I was greeted by a half dozen thugs wielding shiny new Tommy guns. Even James the Chauffeur was armed now, pointing a dainty Derringer at my gut.
“Drop your weapon please, Mr. Madison,” he said coolly.
What choice did I have? My revolver clattered to the pavement.
Another chuckle came from the speaker as if Ivan, wherever he was, could see everything going on outside his establishment. “You want to know something, Mr. Madison?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I could have my men gun you down right where you stand, and the police could do nothing to touch me, I am the law in this city. It is time you learned this.” The intercom switched off.
The goon squad checked their Thompson submachine guns. So, this was it. I was going out with only two C’s to my name.
“Hey, didn’t you give him my message?” I shot the quiet goon a dirty look.
“Of course he did,” said James. “We are going to see Mr. Ivan now.” He led the way inside, but half-turned to repeat my own words: “Don’t try anything cute, pal.”
I’d visited plenty of casinos back in the days when I had money to burn, but none of them could ever have held a candle to what I witnessed inside The Coliseum—an expanse of plush, red-carpeted, gold-inlaid opulence filled with folks from every walk of life huddled around games of dice, cards, and chips, while half-naked dames sauntered about selling cigarettes from trays slung below their gilded bosoms. A full stage showcased the big band that provided a musical backdrop loud enough to keep anybody from thinking straight about their personal finances. Bad economy these days? Sure as hell not here. This is where the rich got richer off each other, the last bastion of excess in a crumbling city. In the old days, these people would party all night and sleep away the mornings. Not anymore. This was the only place they could pretend times hadn’t changed.
“Keep moving,” grunted one of the Tommy gun-toting thugs with a nudge.
A hundred yards later, up a few wide flights of stairs with gleaming brass banisters, we came to a hallway with over a dozen elevators lining the walls. We passed them all by, heading straight for the one marked PRIVATE at the end.
James inserted a key and the mirrored elevator doors slid open without a single shudder. We all managed to cram ourselves inside and moments later were rushing upward in the hotel wing of the casino, rising to the penthouse on the 50th floor. When the doors slid open, I was greeted by another small army of well-dressed, well-built henchmen who looked like they’d all played for the same high school football team. They glared at me like they’d sooner fill me full of hot lead than share a single word. Except for the one behind me. He was all kinds of talkative.
“Move.” Another jab with the muzzle.
“Don’t rush me,” I said. “I’m planning my escape.”
“You see them?” He meant the armed goons lining the wide hallway. “They know you plugged one of our own downstairs.”
“It was a clean shot!”
“That’s not what I heard.”
James led us to the door at the end where he pressed a button on the wall-mounted intercom. “We are here, sir. Would you like us to wait outside?”
Ivan’s throat-clearing nearly burst the speaker. “No. Bring him in.”
There came a click as an automatic locking mechanism disengaged, and the door swung open of its own accord, slowly, as if there was to be some great unveiling, a climactic moment everything had been building toward from the start.
But it was just a fancy penthouse suite with mirrored walls that multiplied my escorts as well as anything you’d hope to find in such a swanky set of digs: full bar, pool tables, hot tub, movie theater, bowling alley—
“Come in, Mr. Madison,” the Russian’s voice emanated from ceiling speakers inside. “I hope you did not expect to meet me face to face. As you know, I value my privacy. But please, do sit down. We have much to discuss.”
The thug behind me clamped a meaty hand on my shoulder as we approached a black leather sofa sectional, and he shoved me into compliance. I found myself enveloped in a cloud of cushy, genuine cowhide. Nubuck could never smell even close. I had to shut my eyes for a second and just take it in.
“Might James fix you a drink?” asked the omnipotent voice from above.
“James can go to take a flying leap,” I said, and the chauffeur glared at me.
“Oh? Did you two not hit it off?”
I glanced up at the speakers. “Sure we did. Until it became clear that he was just part of an elaborate waterfowl hunt. I guess we could have driven straight into Little Tokyo—Yakuza territory—and asked around, shown little Mao’s photo to a few hundred people, had some run-ins with katana-wielding gangsters who bear no love for anything Anglo. I’m sure it would have been plenty exciting for whoever you’d sent to watch me chase my tail in circles. But I’ve been at this game long enough to spot a diversion when I see it, even if it’s a mile away.” I cleared my throat and focused on James the Chauffeur. “You wanted me out of the way while you moved the girl. You’d already knocked off the Harrisons, and ol’ Cauliflower Carl. He’d let it slip that there was a ‘golden goose’, and you couldn’t let him live after that, now could you?”
“Nobody likes a man with loose lips,” Ivan said. “It would have been bad business to let him live. But tell me, how did you find out about Carl?”
“Not every cop on the force is in your pocket. Some of them actually want to take their city back.”
“And you would like to join in this cause?”
I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m no hero.”
“You could have fooled me. The way you stick your neck out for this little girl. Who is she to you? Why risk your life like this? You don’t know if she is dead or alive.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Ivan.” I let the silence run on. “I know she’s right here.”
“Is that so?”
“Why else would we be having this conversation?”
The Russian replied with his own pregnant pause. “I don’t know whether to respect you or pity you.”
I’d been living on borrowed time ever since the moment I found him in my office. Ivan the Terrible decided who lived and died in this town; everybody knew that. Even Mr. Newspaper, God rest his soul. Sergeant Douglass had found the old man with a bullet in his brainpan behind the newspaper stand. More collateral d
amage. “What’s so special about this kid, Ivan? Why’d the Jarheads want her, and why have you killed to hang onto her?”
“Is that what you think?”
“Enlighten me. My last wish.” I hoped to God it wouldn’t be. Champion of lost causes my ass.
A loud sigh rained down from the speakers. “The Harrisons, they painted a quaint picture for you, did they not? Out for an evening stroll, when up comes a van from nowhere, and masked men snatch away the child?”
“Something like that.”
“In fact, that sweet Anglo couple had this little girl shackled in their basement, clothed and well-fed, of course, but chained up while they poured just a bit of sand into her eyes every night. Does this shock you? This they did, and by morning of the next day, there would always be two perfect pearls waiting for them. It sounds like a fairy tale, does it not? A magical fantasy?”
Why was he giving me this crazy talk?
“That delightful couple kept her in chains for nine years. Think of all the pearls they accumulated in that time from her incredible little oyster-eyes!”
Despite the insanity of it all, I couldn’t help remembering Mrs. Jarhead’s necklace, that string of the most dazzling pearls I’d ever seen in my life. But what Ivan suggested wasn’t possible. For them to have come from a child’s eyes?
“They made a mistake when they exchanged the pearls for cash at one of my jewelry shops,” Ivan continued. “They had grown careless over the years, not checking the shops as dutifully as they should have. It was their downfall.”
“Your men followed them, broke out the girl—”
“Yes, while the Harrisons were out enjoying dinner and a movie like the happy couple.”
“But why’d you let them live?” The mobster didn’t make a habit of sparing lives—as he’d demonstrated today in spades.
“To make a point, Mr. Madison. To show that even members of the exalted United World military, be they retired or active duty, they should see me as a force to be reckoned with.”
“They didn’t know that already?” Nothing like a little ego stroke to extend one’s life span—even if only by a few minutes.
The Malfeasance Occasional Page 17
