Deadlock (Ryan Lock 2)

by Black, Sean

  On the way there, Lock and Ty had driven past the bombed-out Federal Courthouse, a reminder of not only where this whole crazy journey had started, but also of how far Reaper and his daughter were prepared to go to achieve their aims.

  The cab driver had dropped them, at Lock’s request, next to a weed-infested lot two blocks away from the address Coburn had given them. A crack-ridden prostitute sporting a battered blonde wig and an Adam’s apple the size of a grapefruit tottered over towards them on clear-plastic stiletto heels.

  ‘How you boys doin’ tonight?’ he asked Ty.

  ‘Beat it,’ Ty said gruffly, as Lock did his best not to laugh.

  The prostitute put a hand on his hip and waved a finger at Ty with his other hand. ‘Beating it’s ten bucks.’

  ‘Thanks, ma’am,’ Lock said, ‘but we’ll take a rain check.’

  ‘Your loss, baby,’ the prostitute said, tottering back again towards a small knot of co-workers, all of them sporting short skirts, ample cleavage and biceps like longshoremen.

  As they exited the lot, Lock glanced over at Ty. ‘Don’t know why you didn’t get her number.’

  ‘Dude, that was a chick with a dick. You know what one of those is?’

  ‘Do I know? Sounds like my dad’s second wife.’

  ‘How’s your old man doing anyway? Still in God’s waiting room?’ Ty asked.

  ‘Down in the Florida Keys, making out like he’s Humphrey Bogart.’

  Ty jerked his head up the street towards the address Coburn had given them. Lock followed Ty’s gaze. There was no sign of the promised US Marshals arrest response team, which they’d been informed would be handling this.

  ‘Could use him now,’ Ty said.

  Damn straight, thought Lock. Lock’s father, even though he was now in his sixties and had lived in America for most of his adult life, had lost none of his Scottish toughness. He was a good man to have in your corner – especially when, like now, your corner was next to empty.

  Lock took another look around for signs of support but there was none in sight. He got on his cell phone to Coburn.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  ‘There’s been a delay in getting the search warrant,’ Coburn told him.

  Lock kicked out at the edge of the sidewalk in frustration.

  ‘Are you there?’ Coburn asked him.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lock answered.

  ‘OK, then sit tight. Whatever you do, do not go into that building until we get there.’

  Lock didn’t say anything.

  ‘You hear me, Lock?’ Coburn said.

  ‘I hear you,’ Lock said, hanging up and looking at Ty. ‘No harm in at least taking a look.’

  ‘Nothing illegal about it either,’ Ty agreed. ‘Just two private citizens checking on someone.’

  ‘Right,’ Lock nodded, jamming a fresh clip into his 226.

  The apartment block where Reaper had been sighted was next door to a homeless shelter and directly opposite a brightly painted Vietnamese restaurant. A group of three men were stretched out on the sidewalk, their backs against the building. The youngest of them looked up at Lock and Ty, his eyes yellow and vacant, a line of drool running from the corner of his mouth down his jaw and on to the collar of his jacket. He put out his hand. ‘Help me out, man?’

  Lock made eye contact with him. Peel away the beard and the crack-pocked skin and the man was early twenties, no more than a kid really. Lock wondered what had happened to him to bring him here. He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill, bending down so that he was at eye level with the young man.

  ‘I’m looking for someone who we think lives here,’ Lock said with a nod towards the apartment block.

  The young man’s eyes flitted from the ten spot to Lock and back again.

  ‘He’s white. Real big. Shaved head. Lots of ink. Nazi shit.’

  Lock spotted a flicker of recognition, and then fear.

  ‘Relax,’ he said to the young man. ‘If we find him, he’s not coming back here.’

  ‘2G,’ the young man said, his hand shooting out towards the ten spot.

  Lock kept the money pinched between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You’re sure?’

  The young man nodded.

  ‘You’d better be,’ Lock said, relinquishing the ten-dollar bill. ‘Because if you’re jerking me around, I’ll be back to put you out of your misery.’

  Lock got back up and, with Ty, stepped towards the building entrance.

  There was an entry system. Ty pushed a button for an apartment on the top floor. A few seconds later a woman’s voice, sleepy and disconnected, answered, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Got something for you,’ said Ty, slurring his words slightly.

  It worked. There was another silence, then the lock clicked open with a buzz, and Lock and Ty stepped into the grubby, dimly lit foyer.

  The building reeked of urine, sweat and stale food. The smell took Lock back to Pelican Bay. He sucked it in through his nostrils, more convinced than ever that Reaper had to be here for a reason. Why else would he have traded one fetid hell hole for another when there was a whole country full of fresh air and wide open spaces out there?

  Lock and Ty split up, Ty taking the elevator while Lock took the stairs. As Lock pushed through into the stairwell, he took out his SIG, holding it down by his hip. He didn’t want to be caught cold if he met Reaper on the way down. If Reaper was here, he’d be armed, of that there was no doubt.

  Up on the second floor, Lock pushed open the door and stepped out into a corridor. He didn’t have to do any more searching for apartment 2G. It was right in front of him.

  The door was closed. Set into it was a peephole. Lock skirted it, hugging the wall to one side of the door as he waited for Ty.

  There was a loud clank as the elevator shuddered to a halt and Ty stepped out. They both moved slowly towards the door.

  A shadow fell over the young man slumped outside the apartment building that Lock had entered a few moments before. He looked up from the ten-dollar bill Lock had given him to see a woman standing beside him.

  ‘What you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘What you told me to tell him,’ the young man replied. ‘Apartment 2G.’

  ‘Good,’ the woman said, peeling off a fifty from a roll of bills and handing it over. ‘Now get out of here.’

  The young man scrambled to his feet as Chance crossed the street and climbed into a white San Francisco works truck which pulled away from the kerb and disappeared from view along Leavenworth Street.

  Lock waved Ty back towards the stairwell, all the while keeping one eye on the door.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’ Ty asked.

  ‘It’s too easy.’

  Lock frowned, rubbing at the scar that still ran round his scalp, a memento of walking through a door rigged with a shotgun. Fool me once, he thought, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

  ‘So what you want to do?’ Ty said.

  ‘Let’s wait. You go downstairs, see if there’s a fire escape he can climb down. I’ll stay here.’

  Ty nodded, then he was gone, his movements awkward as he jogged down the stairs, his shoulder clearly still troubling him.

  Lock set his phone to silent and texted Coburn, letting him know he was there. Coburn texted back within a minute saying that they finally had the warrant and to stay where he was.

  The minutes passed slowly. There were no sirens, but then a low roar of commotion rose from the street outside, alerting Lock to the arrival of the arrest response team, which was deployed for high-risk fugitive raids.

  Lock tensed, waiting for the door of the apartment to burst open, but it remained resolutely shut. Soon, the sounds of toilets being flushed and water running into sinks could be heard from behind the other apartment doors as the building’s occupants flushed away anything they shouldn’t have. But all that emanated from behind the door of 2G was a heavy silence.

  Footsteps echoe
d in the stairwell below Lock. Then three storm-trooperesque US Marshals came into view, one of them wielding a mini battering ram, one a shotgun, all of them clad in black body armor and sporting Kevlar helmets with visors. Lock pointed them towards the door, then moved away.

  The Marshal with the battering ram hefted it against the handle of the apartment door. It flew open. From where Lock was hunkered down, in the door of the stairwell, weapon drawn, he could see a short length of corridor on the other side of the apartment door. Directly facing it was the apartment’s bathroom. The door was ajar. It opened inwards, although it didn’t look like there was enough room to conceal a man as big as Reaper.

  Then Lock saw it. A thin coil of wire stretched across the bathroom door. The Marshal holding the battering ram stepped towards it as his two colleagues side-stepped the bathroom, moving towards the tiny living area beyond.

  ‘Bomb!’ Lock screamed, diving towards the stairs.

  The Marshal with the battering ram half-turned, taking another step at the same time and stumbling across the wire, which broke, coiling on the floor.

  There was no explosion. Nothing. He flipped up his visor and turned to remonstrate with Lock, who had his head below the top tread of the stairwell.

  ‘Relax. It’s clear.’

  Then there was a dull boom from the bathroom and the Marshal was lifted off his feet by the waves of the blast, his face splitting against the edge of the door, the flesh at the back of both his thighs parting to reveal splintered femur. Pieces of wood from the apartment door sailed over Lock’s head, one shard embedding itself in the plaster of the wall behind him.

  Lock called out to the other two Marshals to get the hell out of there. When he got no reply, he got slowly to his feet. His heart was pounding out of his chest. As the dust settled, he saw the two Marshals emerge from the apartment, one of them supporting his buddy. Lock rushed over to help the injured man. Between them, they got him down the stairs and on to the first floor, where they helped him off with his helmet. Blood was seeping from his ears and nose.

  Lock looked behind him to see Ty heading up the stairs with a couple of paramedics.

  ‘You OK?’ Ty asked.

  Lock nodded.

  As the paramedics set to work, Lock headed back out on to Leavenworth Street. He looked around for the young man who’d given him the apartment number but, like Reaper, he was nowhere to be seen.

  59

  Four San Francisco Fire Department engines screamed past them as they headed up California Street. They had heard the explosion, and Glenn had noted the utter lack of surprise on the face of the man sitting next to him.

  Back at the house, it had taken Glenn a few minutes to calm down enough to realise that he knew who the man sitting next to him was. He’d seen his picture on the front page of the newspaper and on the TV news. It was the guy who’d escaped from that trial up north in a helicopter. He was some kind of Nazi or something. He hadn’t caught the guy’s name, only that he was armed and considered highly dangerous, and that members of the public were not to approach him under any circumstances. OK, so you weren’t supposed to approach the guy. But what if the guy broke into your house and threatened to kill your wife and kids? What were you supposed to do then?

  Glenn had decided that the best thing, the only thing, he could do was exactly what they told him to do. Right now, with his wife and kids back at the house with the other intruder, if they asked him to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and into the freezing cold waters of San Francisco Bay, he’d do it.

  ‘OK, pull up here,’ the guy said, directing him to a spot opposite the front entrance of Grace Cathedral. He’d put on a John Deere tractor ball cap, pulling the brim down low so it was almost touching his eyes. He told Glenn to get out, and as he joined him on the sidewalk said, ‘Now remember, if we don’t call in every ten minutes, you know what happens.’

  Glenn did. Unless the woman back at the house heard from him at regular intervals his family would be killed.

  ‘But what if your cell phone runs out of power, or there’s a network problem?’ Glenn asked, trying to keep the gut-churning fear out of his voice.

  ‘Over here, I’m gonna show you something,’ the man said, ignoring his question and leading Glenn across the wide street.

  They stopped short of the sidewalk by a few feet.

  ‘Right here,’ he said, looking down.

  Glenn was more confused now than ever.

  ‘You don’t see that?’ the man asked.

  All Glenn could see was asphalt on the street. ‘What am I looking for here?’

  ‘You mean, you don’t see that huge goddamn pothole right there?’

  There was no pothole. The road surface was cracked, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  Glenn caught on. ‘Oh, yeah, that.’

  The man tilted his head slightly so that Glenn could see the light from a nearby store glinting in his dark grey eyes. ‘Needs repairing, don’t you think?’

  Glenn fought the urge to laugh. Is this what this is about? They broke into my house, scared me and my family half to death because they want a goddamn pothole that doesn’t even exist repaired? He tried to keep his voice even. ‘You know, you can just call this in. We have a phone number. The city promises to make a repair within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the man said, ‘we did that already. Someone came out, said they couldn’t see anything.’

  Maybe that’s because there is no pothole, you psychopath. That was what Glenn felt like saying, but instead he said, ‘Well, I can see that it needs fixing. I can get my crew on it first thing.’

  ‘Good,’ said the man. He paused and looked at Glenn, and once again Glenn felt a stab of pure terror. ‘So what are you going to say to them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘there ain’t no pothole here. Even a blind man can see that. So what you going to say to them?’

  Glenn thought fast. ‘I’ll just say that we’ve had a burst water pipe underneath. That’s what has caused these cracks.’ He kicked the toe of his right boot at where the top layer of asphalt had puckered into two ridges. ‘Better to fix it now than let it get worse.’

  It was a bunch of baloney but it sounded plausible. Plus, his guys wouldn’t really care too much anyway. They fixed roads. It didn’t really matter to them where or why.

  ‘Good,’ said the man, patting Glenn on the shoulder. ‘Now, I don’t want a patch job. I’m going to need you to go down a ways. And remember, you breathe a word of this and you’ll never see your family again.’

  60

  ‘What’s the matter, man?’

  Glenn stared at his supervisor, jolted by the question. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re an hour early.’

  His supervisor seemed to study him for a moment.

  ‘I had some paperwork to catch up on.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said his supervisor, clearly not buying it. Which was bad news because the kidnappers had been as good as their word, ensuring he would do what he was told by wiring him with a tiny microphone.

  Glenn searched for a more plausible excuse for showing up early. ‘Listen, don’t say anything to anyone, but I needed to get out of the house. Me and the wife have been going through a rough patch recently.’

  The supervisor, who’d only been in the job a few months, having transferred from a different city department, wiped at a dried mustard stain on his tie. ‘Been there.’ Then he wandered back to his office, leaving Glenn on his own.

  Glenn quickly grabbed his list of jobs and set to work. He’d have to fill in the repair request form himself, so he pulled one out and set to work. He inserted the address, the nature of the repair. In the section where the name of the person who’d requested the repair went, Glenn wrote what they’d told him to write – with one slight adjustment.

  Once the form was completed, he lowered his head so that his chin was on his chest and his mouth was close to the microphone. ‘OK, the paperwork’s
all done.’

  He tore off his copy and took the original back to his supervisor. The supervisor took it without a word, then looked at it.

  Glenn’s heart jumped. ‘Problem?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah. It’s just with it being outside Grace Cathedral.’

  ‘What about it?’ Glenn’s heart was racing.

  ‘Well, they got that big funeral there on Tuesday.’

  ‘They’ve always got funerals, ain’t they?’ Glenn said, knowing this wasn’t true. Funerals at the cathedral were a rare event, reserved only for the great and the good.

  ‘It’s the one for that judge – you know, Junius Holmes?’ said the supervisor. ‘So just make sure you get to this today.’

  Glenn exhaled with relief. ‘Don’t worry. I will.’

  An hour later, Glenn and his crew had signs set up, traffic diverted, and were busy at work excavating the road outside Grace Cathedral. He took comfort in the familiar routine although his mind kept slipping back to his home and his wife and children, and what might happen to them if something went wrong.

  There had been a couple of questions from one of the guys in the crew when they set to work but Glenn passed it off easily enough. Yes, the cracks didn’t look too bad, but their job was to repair what they were asked to repair. The guys on the crew had shrugged and got on with it, using a mini excavator to tear up the existing road surface and deposit the contents into the back of a dumper truck.

  Glenn’s heart leapt when a couple of cops on mountain bikes cruised to a stop next to him. He knew them both – not well, but in his job it was impossible not to get to know at least some of the cops. The older of them, a guy in his late fifties with greying hair, propped his bike against the truck and sauntered over.

  ‘Didn’t know you guys were working here today,’ he said.

  Glenn could feel his face flush. ‘Kind of a last-minute thing.’