Edge of the Pit
Page 15
He took a deep breath and sighed. “You’re right, you are so very right. My apologies sir. It’s priced at a very affordable two thousand five hundred, and gets great gas mileage. Why don’t we take it for a test ride?”
I smiled, “now you’re talking.”
He started it up and pulled it out for me then jumped in the passenger side and I drove it around the block. It pulled to the right a little and had squeaky brakes, but seemed pretty solid. “You got a deal,” I told him.
Back at the office I peeled off twenty five hundred dollar bills and laid it on the table. He filled out the transfer paperwork. “Now I just need to see your I.D.”
I pulled out the Texas driver’s license with my fake name Tex Parker on it and slid it across the desk. He looked at the picture and then at me. “Can you take your sunglasses off so I see your eyes?”
“What do you want to do that for?”
“Regulations.”
“You have to see my eyes to sell me a car? The lights hurt my eyes, that’s why I’m wearing sunglasses. I had surgery a couple of days ago. That’s me, right on the license, you can tell.”
He seemed a little unsure, hesitant. And that’s when I saw the newspaper sitting on a pile behind him and on the front page was a frame grab from the bar with me holding the shotgun and getting ready to blow out the ceiling.
I needed the car and had to roll with the punches this time. Sure I could knock him out and tie him up till I got far enough away, but what if he wasn’t even suspicious of me and this really just standard procedure and what he was required to do when he sold a car. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
“Alright,” I said and took off my sunglasses and squinted. “Satisfied?”
He smiled. “Why thank you son, here’s your paperwork and the key to your new car, you’re all ready to go.”
When I drove off the lot I knew he was probably phoning the cops so I headed straight East towards the civic center and found the nearest hardware store and bought a long sleeve shirt and rubber gloves, masking tape, a newspaper, ten cans of black metal spray paint and a screwdriver.
I was parked in the darkest corner of the lot and quickly switched plates with the car parked next to me. Then I drove around the block and found a dark alley between two apartment buildings, parked behind a dumpster, taped off the bumpers, headlights side mirrors and windows with the newspaper, put on the shirt and gloves and methodically sprayed the cans of paint and within ten minutes I had a black car. Pulled the tape and newspaper, rolled the mess into a ball and tossed it in the dumpster, then jumped in and backed out the way I’d come. It was a ten minute pit stop, and now I had a black car.
I zigzagged through the city streets, down one block, over two, down two blocks over three, until I was certain no one could be following me. Then back onto Wilshire and headed to the city again.
Flashing police lights up ahead, three cars boxing in a small white sedan like the one I’d just bought, five cops had the driver, a guy wearing a baseball cap spread eagled on the front bumper. Hands behind his head, face down on the hood. One cop was frisking him while another held a flashlight in the suspects face. Thought they had me. Traffic was backed up as everyone rubbernecked what was going on, and when I slowly passed by the scene, not one of the cops paid me any notice. They were looking for a white car and mine was as black as the night that had descended onto the city. Still, I turned my face as I passed by not wanting to take the chance.
That bastard at the car dealership sold me a car and then ratted me out, just as the cabbie had done last night. It was like the whole city was against me. Greedy bastards turning against their customer, someone who paid them honest money for a product or a service, and then backstabbing them, turning them in to the authorities to reap a tainted profit. Like Judas.
And even though I wasn’t anything remotely near to the Christ Jesus, it was the same sort of betrayal. I was innocent of any crime. So far anyways, but that might change if I kept getting backed into a corner. Didn’t these city people know you weren’t supposed to back a badger into a corner?
So far I’d been a nice guy, reserved even by my standards. Sure, I had to knock a couple of guys out, fire a couple of weapons, but the only one who got seriously injured it seemed was me. I was tired of being hunted. It had been three days now, and I was going to run out of steam. The police seemed to be clueless with this case, this crime. Chasing after the wrong guy, me. I was being set up, the fall guy, the patsy. Somewhere the real culprit was laughing. It looked like it was up to me and me alone. I had to find the star, without any help from anyone, this is how it was shaking out, and was without a doubt the only way out of this mess. Find the star, solve the crime and get the cops and the agency and the whole city off my back. But I didn’t know where to start.
I had point A and point B and that was it. Her house and the club and the place in between where someone nabbed her.
The place in between where someone nabbed her…
The traffic light. Someone was able to switch the lights after I passed through, stopping the convoy and attacking them before I could get back to them.
The light switch was easy, you could buy one on the black market and it would be untraceable. There was no line there.
I had to go back to the scene of the crime again. Maybe talk to the Chinese dude in the restaurant. He told me not to come back again, but I had no choice. I pulled a U-turn and headed back to Bell and Crenshaw.
It was eight o’clock when I found a place to park, two blocks away. It never varied. Two blocks was always a good number, far enough away to avoid detection and close enough to run at a clip and escape the way you came. I put on a beanie and overcoat and locked my new car. Like the Chinese guy had said the first time I was here, it’s a dangerous neighborhood.
I walked down the same side of the street that the restaurant was located on, so I could observe the opposite side and when I got to the corner I lingered and found a darkened doorway to hang out in. The restaurant looked busy enough, cars parked on both sides of the street, people streaming in and out, sometimes with square white carry-out boxes. Business was good. The rest of the block was dark and deserted. The building across the street from the restaurant was boarded up with a big shiny ‘For Sale’ sign on it with a national real estate firm. It was a two story brick building, looked solid enough for a sniper, the brick walls would deaden the sound of the pop, the top floor had windows every ten feet or so, like an apartment building with individual rooms. It was the only two story building on that side of the street, the rest were one story cracker box stores, one selling used appliances and crack seed, a guitar shop and a dry cleaner.
Whoever shot me off the bike either had to crouch on top of one of the single store buildings, or did the deed from one of the boarded up second floor windows. My bet was a second floor window. There’s no way they could get a good shot off from inside a parked car. Too many witnesses at ground level, plus the difficulty factor of a tight space and a moving target.
I dialed the number on the sign, maybe someone would still be working at the real estate office, but no such luck, and all I got was a recording. I wanted to find out who owned the building, who had access. It was a long shot, but at this point in time everything was a long shot. Except for the sniper shot that took me off the bike. It was only about thirty feet from one of the windows to the street where I would have been riding, blasting it back to the intersection, and then crashing headlong into the empty building next to the restaurant.
I walked across the street and down the alley next to the boarded up building and found a side door. It was locked with a deadbolt on the inside, and I found an old newspaper in the trash piled up against the brick wall, waded it around my fist and punched out the glass in the center of the door, and reached in and unlocked it. It was musty and dusty inside and I closed the door and clicked on my pen light to find the stairwell tucked into an alcove by the front door.
There was dust everywhere
which was going to make my investigation easier. The center of the stairway steps had less dust than the edges which indicated that they had been used recently. It didn’t mean a thing as the realtors selling the property might have taken people up and down the stairs to show the place.
At the top of the stairway was a long hallway and five doors, all open and I went into the first room. A large rat scurried across the floor and into a closet. I followed it with the pen light and could see it disappear into a hole at the baseboard. The place was a pit.
The windows were boarded up from the inside with half inch plywood and deck screws. The plywood was cut straight and clean and was the best thing about the place so far.
I scanned the floor in front of the window. It was covered in thick white dust and three pronged rat foot prints with pointy little claws at the tips of the prints, cobwebs hung from the edges of the plywood. I looked at the centers of the deck screws, the triangle edges were clean as though they were installed by a pro with no stripping. I had to keep from sneezing from all the dust, and as I went into each room I saw the same thing, thick dust and rat prints, and plywood, except for the last room, the one on the corner that looked towards the restaurant. Thick dust and covered in footprints again, only this time they were human.
The area in front of the boarded up window looked like someone had a soccer match, the footprints were facing every which way and there was a totally clean area in front of the left corner, someone wanted to get a good foothold on solid wood. No cobwebs on the corners of the plywood, and I looked at the centers of the deck screws, some were stripped and mangled as though they were taken off and re-attached with the wrong size screw-bit by an amateur. This is where the sniper stood, or crouched.
I searched the floor for evidence, a bullet casing, a hair, piece of skin, anything. But there was only dust and footprints. Time to move on.
I let myself out the way I came in and walked down the alley and kept to the shadows and watched the restaurant for a while. It was nearing ten o’clock and the crowd was thinning out. I could see the old man helping with dishes and my friend the young Chinese guy talking to some customers at the cash register. The last time I saw him he ushered me out the back way, and told me not to come back. I don’t listen very well.
He didn’t seen me at first when I walked up the steps and through the doors, he was still busy talking to the customer at the cash register, there was something wrong with the credit card the guy was trying to use, and neither one of them seemed pleased. Finally the customer pulled out another card, which must have been the magic one, since they both smiled as the machine sprang to life and sputtered out a strip of paper. They shook hands and the customer went out through the doors and as the Chinese guy looked over at me sitting at a nearby table his smile melted into a frown. He semi-shouted something in Chinese to the old guy and strolled over to me while wiping his hands on a towel hooked into his belt and stood in front of me with a scowl that seemed to come from the other side of the planet.
“You don’t look too happy to see me again,” I said.
“I tell you never come back here, but you don’t listen. No, you don’t listen.”
“Yeah, I don’t listen very well. It’s a problem I’ve had since I was a kid. My old man always said I had a hearing problem.”
“You’re gonna have more than a hearing problem if you don’t get out of here. I saw you on TV. You’re big news buddy, a real star, making a lot of trouble around town. You know I can make a five thousand dollar cash reward right now? Turn you in to the cops. Tell me why I shouldn’t eh? Give me one good reason.”
“I’m not the bad guy,” I said. “Simple as that. I got set-up. I was running perimeter security for the star when she got ambushed up the street. Someone shot me off my bike right out in front of your restaurant that was conveniently closed for business that night. You know all this, we’ve been over this before. And now I’m absolutely certain that the sniper did the job from the top floor corner window of the building across the street. I was just there, I saw the evidence.”
“So what? What does that matter? You got a photograph of the guy, you know what he looks like, was there a camera filming him when he was doing the shooting? Cause there sure is a lot of footage of you shooting people and places.”
“When’s the last time you got jumped and just stood there and took it?” I pointed at him. “That guy deserved worse than I gave him. Bottom line, I’d say he got off lucky.”
“Bottom line, get the hell out of here. I don’t need any more trouble.” He pointed at the door.
“Just one question, and then I’ll leave. Who owns the building across the street?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t really a happy smile, more like a sly smile bordering on Oriental revenge. “Some big shot A-hole developer, name of Charles Washington.”
I grimaced and caught my breath and nodded, that guy again.
He saw through my reaction.
“Why, you know him?”
“I guess I was working for him that night you found me. He was the one paying for the protection.”
“Well you sure screwed that up.”
“Sure did. But what do you have against him? And why is that building so run down if they’re trying to sell it?”
He scoffed. “They’re not trying to sell it. They’re trying to run us out of here.”
I squinted my eyes and cocked my head. “What?”
“This whole block is owned by Charles Washington, both sides of the street, except for this building, we own it outright, no mortgage. You see my Grandpa out there sweeping the steps? He bought it over fifty years ago when he was a young man, worked his tail off to pay it off. We’re free and clear, and we’re not moving. The big shot developer thinks if he can keep the block run down, he can run us out of business, make it too dangerous for customers to come here for dinner. He wants to take over this whole block, bust it down completely and develop it into a high dollar destination, movie theatres and boutique restaurants and hotels, and nightclubs. We told him go ahead, we’ll fit right in, we’ll even help him, an authentic Chinese restaurant in the middle of his destination is a perfect scenario, but he is stubborn as a jackass, or a kid that won’t share his candy bar. Wants it all or nothing, and so this street wallows in filth from his abandoned buildings.”
“I remember a saying my old man used to have. He’d cut off his nose to spite his face.”
The Chinese guy nodded. “Yeah, that he would. Now get out.” He pointed to the door again. He never even said please, a hard case to the end.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Alright, I’m going. I got the answers I needed. You’re kind of like a fortune cookie that talks. Hard to crack open though.”
“I crack back,” he said and walked to the door and held it open for me.
I wouldn’t doubt it.
20.
It was an hour before midnight when I got to the center of the city. Skyscrapers rising from the asphalt and concrete all around me, and I found a parking space two blocks from the white gleaming tower of glass and steel nicknamed the Ivory Tower. Brand new, eighty floors of prime office and apartment space.
It was a perfect parking spot on the right hand of the street with a coin meter, twenty five cents per half hour, I could feed it coins all night if needed. I had a straight line of sight right into the front entrance of the building and most of the windows all the way to the top. At street level was a hotel type porte-cochere that could fit twenty full size busses, but they kept it clear of cars, I could see the doorman directing traffic in and out. I could lean the seat back and focus the scope on the entrance by looking under the steering wheel and if I wasn’t careful I might fall asleep being too comfortable.
I had to admit it was a pretty busy front entrance, all types of people going in and out, mostly well-dressed business types, a lot of suits and ties and high heels. Taxis and limos pulled in and out and they had a valet parking attendant at a little stand on the side who
would take cars to what must have been an parking facility under the building.
I figured that I would scope the entrance for a while, get a feel for it, the general vibe that was emanating from the center of it, and figure out a way to get in without being detected. The entrance to a building is like a talking mouth on a person, what you hear coming out of someone’s mouth is what is coming directly from their soul in many ways, coming straight from their inside. If you see mean spirited people coming out of the entrance, then you have a mean spirited building.
I remembered back in Baghdad during the surge, there was this one little apartment building out towards the western part of the city. It had a good reputation, no one living there was a problem as far as we knew, but there were random mortar and firearms attacks nearby at odd days and times, hit and runs, and the intel we had pointed to the general area where this particular apartment building was located and so we set up a perimeter one night, an observation post to gather more intelligence, and I was scoping the entrance when I noticed that a significant percentage of the people going in and out of the building seemed angry, not yelling and spitting and cursing, but it was their eyes and their body language, the way the held their head and their limbs, their eyes looked angry, seething, they were tense all over, I could see it, I knew what it was, anger and turmoil boiling over inside of them and coming out through their eyes and posture.
Now of course we were in the middle of an occupied city in a war zone and most of the people in that city were either terrified or angry or both, so my theory was in it’s infancy, but I made a note of it and talked to the Captain in charge of the platoon and he ordered a midnight raid, and sure enough we found a hidden stash of weapons in the cellar, maps of the city with marks on it where recent attacks had been made. These bad guys were keeping notes of where and when they ambushed coalition forces.