Snake Eyes

by Max Allan Collins

  Greg held up a slip of paper with something already scrawled on it.

  “Good. Then let’s go have a talk with Fleety.”

  “Or Grandma. And we can check out his hangout corner on the way.” Greg slipped the piece of paper into his shirt pocket.

  Warrick drove this time, window down, air rushing in, helping him stay alert (and awake).

  Warrick cruised the corner of Beatty and Ludwig where Greg had met Fleety before. As they rolled by, Greg thought he saw a surreptitious figure slip hastily into the shadows of a vacant house.

  “I think that was him!” Greg said.

  “Thought I saw someone, too. Sure it’s Fleety?”

  “Not sure. But…pretty sure.”

  “Looked nervous…We’ll go around the block and stop back a ways, then go up on foot. You do have your sidearm, right?”

  An acid rumble burned in Greg’s stomach. “Yeah. Never without it.”

  Warrick took four rights and parked the SUV on the same street as the empty house, but at the other end of the block.

  “Let’s go,” the older CSI said.

  Though noon neared, the temperature wasn’t high for Vegas and a nice cool breeze whispered pleasantly at them. Nonetheless, Greg felt every pore of his body oozing sweat, and some invisible motor had turned over within him, causing every limb to vibrate.

  “Stick close,” Warrick said.

  Instead of walking up the front walk, Warrick led the way around the side, pressing his body against the exterior wall of the house; Greg copied him, trying to control his breathing. As they edged forward, Warrick unholstered his pistol, signaling Greg to do the same.

  It took only all of his strength and half an eternity before the younger man could get the damn strap unsnapped and withdraw his Glock nine-millimeter automatic. The pistol seemed unnaturally heavy, a handful of power and terror. His mind raced through every firearms procedure he’d ever learned. His sweaty back pressed against the wall, Greg moved his left hand up, Glock in both hands—surprisingly, the weapon felt even heavier.

  Warrick peeked around the corner, then ducked back and shook his head. “Nobody back there,” he whispered.

  Greg thought, Good.

  Warrick was saying, “Back door’s open, though—we’ve got to go in.”

  Greg nodded and felt sweat droplets bounce off his forehead.

  Warrick whispered, “You okay?”

  Again Greg nodded and with his chin indicated that Warrick should go ahead.

  The rear door had no screen and the flimsy wooden thing hung like a loose tooth from one valiant rusty hinge. The house gave off an awful smell—a mingling of must, dust, and urine. Vacant building perhaps, but someone had been using it for something—squatting possibly, or maybe just a lookout for a drug dealer doing business out of a nearby house.

  Warrick—his pistol in front of him—stepped through the doorway into the kitchen.

  Greg followed him in, ears perked for the slightest sound, vibration, tremor, anything that might signal the presence of others. In the tiny kitchen—cramped even minus any refrigerator or stove—a patina of dust covered the counters and sinks. The dusty floor had so many footprints, however, they might have been made a minute ago or a month or a year. An angry amber light filtered through yellowed, ripped and torn pull shades, and the layer of dirt on the windows provided an art-film soft focus to this dreary, dangerous reality.

  Greg stayed on Warrick’s heels as he eased through a doorway into what had once been a dining room. The younger CSI, still consciously thinking of his handgun training, wheeled his pistol left, not lowering the barrel until he had cleared his partner.

  No furniture in the room, but a couple of sleeping bags snugged flat against the far left wall beneath a row of windows.

  The two CSIs moved through a living room with a shaded picture window, under which a boom box and a pile of CDs sat near a card table filled with empty malt-liquor forties and an ashtray overflowing with butts; at the table, two opposing folding chairs (another two leaned against a wall). In here, the same nasty aroma of the kitchen was spiced with the stale sweat smell.

  Warrick withdrew his pocket flashlight and, using his left hand, shone it down the hall, his left wrist becoming a brace for his pistol. Greg kept his Glock pointed toward the ceiling in the narrow hallway, where ancient floral wallpaper was peeling itself off. On the left, a closet, then either a bedroom or a bathroom beyond; across the corridor, another open door, and at the end of the hall, another—probably the master bedroom, a term that seemed arcane in this hovel.

  Problem was, the closet door would open toward the living room—if Warrick passed the door, then came back to open it, the wood would be between Greg and Warrick. If they both passed the door and turned back, they’d have three unchecked rooms at their back.

  Sweet, Greg thought bitterly.

  They could go down the hallway, back to back; but one would have the closet to cover while the other tried to watch three doors that might hide Fleety or God knew how many of his homies.

  Warrick fell back into the living room and, in a barely audible whisper, said, “If we go back and call for backup…” and shrugged.

  This conveyed to Greg that if the CSIs called for backup from the SUV, any Hoods currently in the house would be gone before anybody got here.

  Greg nodded grimly.

  Warrick’s eyes locked Greg’s, and rarely in Greg’s experience had anyone looked at him with such intensity. In that same barely audible whisper, Warrick asked, “Up for this?”

  Greg wanted to yell, Hell, no! Let’s go call for backup, maybe get SWAT out here, and if they’re gone when we get back, well then…we’ll get ’em next time. He might even have actually said that if his mouth and tongue had been working and weren’t drier than a desert.

  Instead, he nodded.

  “Stay close,” Warrick whispered, and proceeded back to the mouth of the hallway.

  Keeping his pistol trained on the closet door, Warrick moved past it. Greg was right on his heels, but before he could pass, the closet door was thrown open, knocking Greg back, and the gun from Warrick’s grasp.

  When he regained his balance, the door swung lazily shut and Greg found himself staring into the wild brown eyes of a bare-chested, very angry black kid in red sweatpants and a white nylon do-rag with a gun in his left fist.

  The young man was trying desperately to find a way to pull the trigger, but Warrick had him by the arms, and the two men wrestled to the end of the hall, where Warrick got the guy down on the floor, the guy’s gun hand extended to the left.

  Taking one quick step, Greg kicked the gun out of the gang kid’s hand and found himself squatting down and pressing his pistol into the kid’s skull as Warrick pulled out handcuffs. On the kid’s neck were three jagged scratches.

  “Freeze!” Greg shouted . “Just hold still!”

  The kid’s eyes blazed at Greg. “Fuck y’self! Fuck y’self!”

  Warrick locked the cuffs and rose off the young man’s back. When someone came out of the bedroom in a blur, sweeping up Warrick’s gun off the floor, Warrick never saw it coming, his back to the attacker; in half a second, Warrick’s own gun was pressed against his temple.

  Rising slowly and taking a step back away from the cuffed guy on the floor, Greg leveled his pistol at half the baby face of Isaiah “Fleety” Fleetwood. The other half of the young man’s face remained hidden behind Warrick.

  Fleety yelled, “Drop the motherfuckin’ gun, you five-oh prick!”

  Greg felt the gun shaking in his hand as he pointed it at Warrick and the shorter man hiding behind him.

  “Can’t do that,” Greg said.

  “Drop the gun or I drop your bud!”

  “Make him let me go,” the kid in cuffs whined from below.

  “Jalon, man,” Fleety said, “I got this.”

  So, the guy on the floor was Jalon Winsor—the scratches on Jalon’s neck should have told him that. That meant they had both the guys
they had come for: now all they had to do was defuse this little situation and walk them out.

  “Isaiah,” Greg said, amazed at how steady his voice sounded, “you need to put the gun down.”

  “How you know my name, blondie?” Fleety asked, obviously agitated.

  “Let’s keep to what’s important, Isaiah,” Greg said, outwardly calm. “You need to put the gun down.”

  From the floor, Jalon yelled, “Just smoke his white ass, Fleety!”

  Fleetwood thumbed back the hammer on Warrick’s Glock; the click was a tiny sound that registered to Greg as the loudest he’d ever heard.

  Fleety was yelling, “You put the gun down, you put the gun down!”

  Greg suddenly had an intense urge to urinate, but fought it. Slowly, he lowered the barrel of his pistol.

  Warrick gave Greg a look that said, Greg, you put that gun down, we’re both dead….

  And Greg gave Warrick a look that said, Trust me.

  Warrick’s eyes closed and Greg couldn’t tell if that meant his fellow CSI understood his unspoken message and accepted it, or was making peace within himself before he died.

  Fleety’s eyes remained wild, but he seemed more scared than angry as he held the gun to Warrick’s head. Greg lowered his pistol to his side.

  Instantly, Fleety calmed, his eyes narrowing, his breathing slowing.

  “Now,” Fleety said, his voice still loud but less strident. “Let my man Jalon go.”

  Greg shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

  “Your man’s about to get—”

  Greg cut him off. “What happened to you, Isaiah?”

  “What?” Fleety asked, taken aback.

  “What happened to you? Until your mom died—”

  Fleety snarled, “Hell d’you know about my moms!”

  “I know she loved you,” Greg said, the gun a thousand-pound weight at the end of his arm. “You pulled a B average when she was alive.”

  “Yeah, well, she gone.”

  Jalon butted in again. “Fleety, just smoke them, and let’s get the hell outta here!”

  Fleety twitched…but didn’t pull the trigger.

  Greg looked down at Jalon. “You need to be quiet,” he said firmly, not believing how calm his voice sounded. He wondered if at any moment a bullet would explode through him and that would be the end.

  “Fuck you!” Jalon screamed.

  “You kill us,” Greg said, somehow keeping his voice matter of fact, “you ‘smoke’ us five-ohs, this place’ll be crawling with blue uniforms. Then SWAT will swarm in here. Twenty-four hours, Hoods’ll be history. Every Hood in town will be in jail or dead. Want that on your head, Isaiah?”

  Jalon’s eyes danced with fear.

  Was Fleety wavering?

  “Isaiah, you have a chance here to do the right thing. Let my partner go, and we’ll talk you through this trouble you’re in.”

  “No trouble I’m in,” Fleety blurted. “I got the gun.”

  Greg could feel the situation slipping away. “Your mother gave you a name that meant something—Isaiah. Very biblical.”

  “Think I don’t know that?” Fleety said, defensive, and shoved the snout of the gun against Warrick’s temple. Warrick’s eyes widened.

  Fleety was staring at Greg now, and Jalon had the good sense to keep a low profile—especially since whenever he looked up, he now stared into the barrel of Greg’s gun.

  Fleety said nothing.

  Greg asked, “What are you doing with the Hoods, anyway? That’s the life your mother worked so hard for you to have?”

  The gun inched away from Warrick’s head.

  Greg said, “Maybe that was divine intervention last night…maybe that lion meant something….”

  Fleety, startled by this—eyes flaring as he likely relived that lion leaping in front of their stolen car last night—flinched.

  Not waiting for Greg to talk the kid down further, Warrick dropped a shoulder, spun, and punched the gun out of Fleety’s hand. Surprised, the kid took a quick step back and slipped, then Warrick had a hold of him and was twisting one hand behind his back.

  Then Isaiah was on his knees, as if praying.

  Greg yanked out his handcuffs and passed them to Warrick, who bound Fleety up.

  “Isaiah Fleetwood and Jalon Winsor,” Warrick said, “you are under arrest for the murder of DeMarcus Hankins. You have the right to remain silent…”

  He went on, but Greg stopped listening. God, he had to pee….

  “We didn’t do shit,” Jalon was whining.

  Warrick gave him a little smile. “Those scratches on your neck tell a different story—like, the skin we got from under DeMarcus’s fingernails is going to match your DNA.”

  “Hell you say,” Jalon said.

  “If I’m lyin’,” Warrick said through his nastiest grin, “I’m dyin’.”

  Standing in that cramped hallway, the crisis over, his guts churning, his bladder about to burst, Greg felt an urge to barf, thanks to the smell of stale sweat and fresh fear. The tongue-on-a-battery metallic taste of terror that still clung to his mouth only served to heighten his nausea.

  Outside, they called for a squad car and, while they waited with the two young black men, Greg said, “You got this, ’Rick, for a minute?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Greg paused, nodded toward the house. “Is that a crime scene in there?”

  “Well…not exactly. Sort of.”

  “I mean…can I take a leak in there? I got in trouble for that one time.”

  Warrick laughed. “Yeah…. Yeah. I wouldn’t touch anything, though.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Germs.”

  Greg felt much better when he came back out, but then something inside him sent him running to the farthest back corner of the property, where he threw up.

  When he returned to Warrick’s side, a squad car was out front, lights flashing, as two uniforms loaded the Hoods in. A small crowd was gathering, some there to bitch, some to demonize the police; most just came to watch.

  “If this is a crime scene,” a pale Greg said to Warrick, with a head bob toward the side of the house, “I hope we don’t process it.”

  Innocently, Warrick asked, “You know what Bob’s Round-Up Grill’s slogan is, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “One breakfast burrito, comin’ right up.”

  “Oh man. Please….”

  They climbed into the Denali, Warrick again getting behind the wheel. Warrick turned the key, slipped the SUV into drive, and rolled slowly away from the curb.

  “Remind me to thank you, sometime,” Warrick said.

  Greg was looking out the window.

  “That was a hell of a thing, Greg. That may be the single bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Smiling, Greg said, “Or the dumbest.”

  Warrick shrugged. “Right up there for that, too.”

  “You know me,” Greg said, his hands shaking in his lap, “sometimes I just can’t stop talking.”

  “You stayed cool and didn’t panic. That’s what you do in a situation like that. You stay calm and let the rest come naturally.”

  “Hope so. Hope I’m never in a situation like that again. But could you slow down a little, ’Rick?…You know how easily I get scared.”

  Warrick glanced at his partner, laughed gently, and eased off the accelerator.

  10

  Saturday, April 2, 2005, High Noon

  IN THE BOOT HILL POLICE STATION, Gil Grissom and Catherine Willows were as much prisoners, in a way, as the quartet of Spokes the Patrolmen were in the process of locking up.

  The CSIs headed not to a cell, however, but to the mostly glass enclosure of Chief Lopez’s office that looked out on a small, empty bullpen for detectives and officers, all of whom were out and about, dealing with the biker dilemma.

  Grissom wondered idly why these small-town police chief or sheriff offices were always so similar and bereft of personality. A basic rule of
crime scene investigation was broken by such offices: a CSI always viewed personal domains (offices, bedrooms, dens, and kitchens) as windows into the character of their inhabitants, whether victim, suspect, or even witness.

  His own office back in Vegas—with all its mysteries and treats scattered around, from the two-headed snake to pickled pig parts, various things in jars, all the insects on display—certainly fit that pattern.

  On the other hand, perhaps an impersonal office like Lopez’s—with its handful of framed diplomas and commendations, its bulletin board of work-oriented snapshots and circulars, even its police association calendar—spoke of the chief’s professionalism. Not that Grissom considered himself any less a complete professional simply because he chose to put a few of his obsessions on display. For a man who spent so much of his life at work, Grissom could hardly keep his own character out of his quarters.

  “What was that old Western,” Lopez said as he positioned himself behind a metal desk, the CSIs taking visitor’s chairs opposite, “the one with John Wayne?”

  Catherine blinked at their host. “I’m a good investigator, Chief, but you’ll have to narrow that down a little.”

  “Rio Bravo,” Grissom said.

  Now Catherine looked at Grissom; she did not blink.

  “What?” Grissom said to her. “It’s a classic—lawmen holed up in a little sheriff’s office, while the bad guys converge outside in the town they’ve taken over. Wonderful film. Howard Hawks.”

  “Let’s hope we survive,” she said pleasantly, “so we can rent that some time.”

  “Fine,” Grissom said, and smiled.

  Catherine squinted at him, as if not quite sure Grissom were really there.

  Lopez said, “Well, this thing started out like the OK Corral or maybe Custer’s last stand; but Rio Bravo is what it feels like it’s turning into.”

  “We have Highway Patrol support,” Grissom said.

  “Not enough, I’m afraid,” Lopez said.

  “You need to call the governor now,” Catherine said firmly. “We need help here.”

  Grissom offered an open palm. “We might be able to cool down the Predators.”

  “How?” the other two asked at once.

  “By catching their fallen leader’s killer. On the other hand, as long as Finch is in here, the Spokes will remain a threat.”