Shaka was strong and bulked up, but that doesn’t make a man quick or smart. Part of his problem was too many muscles. Part was he was accustomed to beating up smaller people who had no fighting skills and were easily intimidated by a brash thug like him. Bob Burke was none of those. Watching Shaka’s eyes and shoulders as he telegraphed the punch, Bob leaned back far enough for Shaka’s big fist to pass harmlessly by, a few well-measured inches in front of Bob’s nose. As it did, Bob’s left hand swept in and struck the back of Shaka’s right elbow, and pushed. With all his weight behind the punch, the added momentum caused Shaka to turn even harder to his left, stumble, and fall to his knees, completely off-balance.
“I didn’t start this,” Bob told Carbonari and the general. “But if he comes at me again, I’m going to put him down, hard; and that’s the only warning you’re going to get.”
Enraged, Corliss got to his feet and shouted, “I’m goin’ kill you, you bastard!” as he lunged toward Burke and took another wild swing at him. This time, Bob didn’t back away. He stepped inside, chopped Shaka across the front of his throat with the edge of his hand and followed through with a hard elbow to the bridge of his nose. For a small man, Bob Burke’s various appendages were quick, precise, and lethal. Those two shots dropped the shaved-headed black man to his knees as if he had been hit in the forehead by a brick. He coughed, gasped, and turned pale, as his eyes bulged out and his fingers grabbed at his throat. With the vision of Vinnie’s broken body dancing in front of him, Bob wound up and planted his size nine shoe in Corliss’s crotch. That ended the flight. Corliss toppled over into the grass, moaning.
Burke looked back at the two cops, and then at Donatello Carbonari. “I told you to keep him on a short leash, but you didn’t listen.”
The general’s mouth dropped open as he looked down at Corliss. From reflex more than brains, the Police Chief’s hand went for the butt of the Glock in his holster until Burke raised his hand in warning and the Police Chief stopped. Burke looked at him and Carbonari and said, “That’s the second time he attacked me today. Punks like him need a good butt thumping every now and then, and he just got his.”
The police chief paused and looked at Carbonari, not sure what he wanted him to do. Finally, Carbonari motioned for the police chief to back off, which he gladly did.
“You might be right, Burke,” Carbonari finally replied. “Shaka has been looking to get his ass kicked, and no doubt he deserved it. But I’d be very careful if I were you. Antagonizing a man like that isn’t a smart thing to do.”
Corliss lay on the ground between them, moaning. His nose looked flattened and blood ran down the front of his shirt when Carbonari turned to the Hulks. “Get your thumbs out of your asses and get him out of here,” he said in disgust. The two security guards quickly grabbed Shaka under his shoulders and dragged him toward the casino’s front doors. “Not that way, you morons!” Carbonari shouted. “The back door, where all the other trash goes.”
“You haven’t heard the end of this,” Burke said as he glared at Carbonari. “Or of me.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d say that,” Carbonari answered. “Because you haven’t heard the end of us, either.”
Bob turned and walked quickly back to the Buick, got in the driver’s seat, and threw the car in reverse. He did a tight, tire-screeching, backward “donut” around the small parking lot, kicking a cloud of dust, stones and dirt toward Carbonari, the general, and the colonel, and then floored it, sending the two cops at the roadblock scrambling into the grass to get out of the way, as he flashed past and raced away downhill.
Behind him, in the rear seat, Linda attempted to console Patsy without much success. “You aren’t going to let them get away with this, are you, Bob?” Linda demanded to know.
“Of course not, but this isn’t the time or place.”
“Then where are we going?”
“Back to the Philly airport, and then some place safe.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
As Bob sped away from the hotel, he saw the black Lincoln Town Car parked at the bottom of the hill waiting for them. As he drove past, he glanced into the driver’s seat of the big car and saw the Gumbah fumbling with his cell phone. Apparently, Bob’s sudden retreat down the hill left the two men inside without any instructions, but that didn’t take long for Carbonari to correct. By the time they reached Maryland and crossed Mediterranean, he looked back and saw the Lincoln coming after them.
“Buckle up, girls,” Bob warned Linda and Patsy, expecting trouble, but after the Lincoln caught up, they slowed and remained their usual hundred yards behind. Were they only an escort out of town? Hard to say. Bob continued south to Atlantic, with the Lincoln still filling the center of his rearview mirror. Bob took a sharp right on Atlantic and accelerated, crossing North Carolina and Martin Luther King Boulevard until he finally saw the sign for the Atlantic City Expressway ahead on the right. He fully expected to see the black car remain on Atlantic and not follow them any further, as it had done earlier in the afternoon. This time, however the Lincoln took the ramp behind them, and remained in his rearview mirror as he merged into the northbound Expressway lanes toward Philadelphia.
The Atlantic City Expressway was 44 miles long, ending in Philly, where they could cross the Delaware River and turn south on I-95 to the Philadelphia airport. Five miles after they got on the Expressway, they came to the first of two toll plazas. Bob headed for the cash lanes, and as they approached the tollbooth, the Lincoln cruised through the outer, E-ZPass Lane and continued north, as if the two men in the car hadn’t even noticed the Buick. By the time he paid the toll and drove away, the Lincoln was nowhere to be seen. He considered getting off at the Egg Harbor exit, or even crossing the median, making a U-turn, and heading back south to get away from the Lincoln, but his top priority now was to get out of town.
Bob pulled out his cell phone, scanned through his Favorites, and found a number he knew all too well. It rang six times, but no one answered, which was what he expected. However, when the call rolled to voicemail, rather than the usual short, blunt, male recording, he heard a very sexy female voice and some heavy breathing. “This is the new Ace Storm Door and Window Company. We are really busy right now, doing what you think we’re doing; since you don’t want to interrupt, leave us a message.”
That was followed by three quick beeps, so Bob said, “Hey, this is the Ghost,” wondering who Ace had make the recording for him. “Give me a call. We have a problem.”
Ten seconds later, Bob’s cell phone rang. “Who’s the woman?” he asked.
“Oh, that’s my new pal Dorothy. Since I’m ‘getting on in years,’ as you keep reminding me, I thought I could use a little image makeover.”
“Like Bruce Jenner?”
“Not quite that drastic,” Ace laughed. “Dorothy’s an Air Force captain, a fighter pilot actually, who I met at the rodeo.”
“Don’t tell me you started riding again?”
“Me? Are you kidding? With my back and leg? Dorothy says the horses can smell the shrapnel and pins, and it spooks them. No, I was there watching her ride. She took second in Barrel Riding and first in Tie-Down Calf Roping.”
“Wow! A soulmate at your age. She should be a big help at the Old Soldiers Home.”
“And a captain. Much better retirement checks.”
“Fraternizing with an officer and a gentlewoman? Who’d ’a thunk?”
“All right, Major,” Ace sighed. “That’s enough bullshit for one afternoon. What’s the problem we have? What did you get into now?”
“Not me. This time it was one of your senior sergeants.”
“Let me guess. That dumbass, Vinnie?”
There was no easy way to do this, so he just let it out. “He’s dead.”
For the better part of a minute, there was silence at the other end of the line. Bob had been close to Vinnie, but Ace had been closer, much closer than an officer ever could be. The two sergeants had put up with boring stateside assignments
, firefights in a dozen godforsaken places, bullet wounds, divorces, good deployments and bad ones, car wrecks, bar fights, and too much bad food. In the process, they buried a lot of good men, but those soldiers died on the battlefield, not like this.
Finally, he heard Ace cough and then say, “A couple of days ago, he took leave and said he was taking Patsy up to Atlantic City. It was their second trip up there in the last few weeks, but I didn’t think much about it. He had the time coming, so why not? He was supposed to report back in here by 0800 today, but he never showed. I’ve been covering for him, figuring he’d walk in the door any minute now.”
“Not this time.”
“What happened?”
“He fell out a fifth floor window at the hotel.”
“He fell?”
“That’s what they’re telling me.”
“Doesn’t sound like you believe them.”
“I don’t, but I can’t prove it, not yet.”
Ace grew quiet for a few moments, and then asked, “Is Patsy okay?”
“Physically, but emotionally she’s a basket case.”
“I can imagine. And you’re still there? You want me to come up?”
“No, we’re headed for the Philly airport — me, Patsy, and Linda — then we’re going back to Chicago, as soon as I can get us a flight out.”
“If he didn’t ‘fall,’ I assume you know who did it.”
“Probably. He was dealing with the same kind of morons we dealt with the last time, only a different branch of the family.”
“And I assume they were more than you could handle at the time.”
“Yep, but they claim they didn’t do it.”
“There’s a surprise. I assume you’re not gonna let it rest there, are you?”
“You’re full of assumptions today, aren’t you, Master Sergeant.”
“Vinnie was one of ours. Whatever you’re planning, count me in, and I won’t be the only one,” Ace grunted. “That was Dorothy jabbing me in the ribs. She says to count her in, too. But don’t worry. She might be Air Force and an officer, but the lady can shoot, and she can kick your ass — mine too.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, not yet anyway, not until I’m sure.”
“Doesn’t sound like you, Ghost. If they killed one of our men…”
“If… Vinnie lost a lot of money up here — their money — and then he tried to fight his way out. Yeah, I hold them responsible, but I don’t know if they killed him.”
“When did the fine print start to matter? He was one of us.”
“I know that, but I want to be certain who did what, before we go charging in there. That’s why I called. You need to report this up the chain of command, ASAP. Call Colonel Jeffers, and see if you can reach General Stansky over at the Joint Special Operations Command. Use my name and tell them what I told you. It happened about thirty minutes ago, and the New Jersey State Medical Examiner’s office in Woodbine has his body. Somebody needs to call the Armed Forces Medical Examiner’s Office in Dover, the Army CID, and the FBI. Stansky has the clout to make that happen.”
“Roger that. So tell me what happened.”
“Vinnie came up here and blew a lot of money in the casino.”
“No surprise there.”
“Nope. He started out with $30,000 of his own money, lost that, borrowed $100,000 of theirs, and lost that too. So he went back home, took out a mortgage on the new house, and came back here, but instead of paying off the markers like he said he was going to do…”
“Don’t tell me,” Ace groaned. “He went back to the tables and doubled down?”
“You got it. Pretty soon, he owed them almost $300,000.”
“Christ! What an idiot.”
“And these aren’t people you want to owe money to.”
“Still, they shouldn’t have tossed him out a window.”
“I’m not sure they did, Ace, but he got in a fight with their security people, busted a couple of them up pretty good, and did a lot of damage to the casino; so who knows?”
“No surprise there, either. He always was a bad loser.”
There was silence for a moment or two, until Bob said, “Patsy called me last night.”
“Too bad he got her involved in this… and you.”
“No big deal. I flew in with some cash and a cashier’s check to pay off his markers, but they wouldn’t take the check. They sent me to a bank to get it cashed, while they took Vinnie up to his room to pack. By the time I got back, he was lying in the parking lot below, dead.”
“No witnesses, I assume,” Ace asked.
“Plenty, but none I’d believe. Their hotel security claims he climbed out the bathroom window onto a ledge and slipped off trying to get away, but it didn’t look right to me. Unfortunately, I had the girls, and was in no position to push it at the time.”
“But there’s going to be a next time, isn’t there?”
“Too early to tell, Ace, really. If they didn’t do it… well, we’ve got to let it play out.” All Bob heard was silence at the other end of the phone, so he tried to change the subject. “You’re still down at Bragg, Master Sergeant Randall?”
“Roger that, sir! So is Koz and the Batman. Lonzo just got back from the desert and he’s still highly pissed he wasn’t around last time. Chester and Bulldog are here, too. Off the top of my head, there’s probably ten or twenty more of our top operators down here now, and they’ll all want a piece of this when they hear what happened to Vinnie.”
“Good to hear, but don’t do anything yet. Keep it quiet for the moment.”
“Wilco. The last time you had one of your little reunions, up in Chicago, there were only four of us. This time, you won’t have any problem staffing up. Vinnie had a lot of friends down here, and nobody does that to one of us and gets away with it. Nobody.”
“I hear you, but I have to get the girls back to Chicago first, where they’ll be safe. Your job is to talk to Jeffers and Stansky. Tell them I’ll phone them tomorrow, and I’ll come back down to Bragg in a couple of days. I’m sure there will be a big funeral. We can get together then, reassess the situation, and make some decisions.”
“Sounds like another Gumbah hunt to me.”
“Maybe… Wasn’t exactly fair last time, was it?” Bob said with a grim smile.
“Wasn’t supposed to be, and it won’t be this time, either, if that’s the way they want to play it. You and I both know only suckers want a fair fight.”
After Burke drove away down the entrance drive, Donatello Carbonari pulled out his own cell phone and made a quick call. Then, he turned and headed for the casino, ignoring the city police, the paramedics, and everyone else. With long, angry strides, he walked down the main aisle to the rear service corridor to the Risk Management office. He kicked the door open, stormed across the room, and vented his pent-up rage on Shaka Corliss. The black man lay in near collapse in his desk chair, legs splayed out, staring up vacantly at the ceiling. He held a large bag of ice against his crotch and another one against his face as Carbonari grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and yanked him out of the chair. That sent ice cubes scattering around the room as he raised the stocky black man up to his level, face to face, with Corliss’s feet dangling in mid-air. “You moron!” Carbonari began. “What happened in that room? What did you do?”
“Nuthin’, I swear, Boss. I didn’t do nuthin’.”
“My ass! Burke’s right. Any fool can see his friend didn’t slip and ‘fall’ off that ledge. You threw him off, and even those stupid Atlantic City clowns could see it. Pretty soon we’re gonna be up to our eyeballs in state and federal cops.”
“I didn’t do it, Boss! Ask them,” he pleaded, pointing at the twin Hulks. They were about the same size — two big white guys in their mid-twenties with round, pink faces and blond buzz cuts. Corliss could never tell them apart; but who cares, he would laugh. “We wuz in his room, pullin’ their stuff out of the dresser drawers and the closet, and jammin’ it in their s
uitcases, like you told us to do. Ain’t that right, boys?” Corliss tried to explain as he looked at the two goons for help. They nodded in agreement like two bobble heads; but it was obvious they were afraid of Corliss and didn’t know what to say.
“That dude Pastrami went into the bathroom to take a piss,” the black man went on. “The next thing we knew, he was gone.”
“His name was Pastorini, you dumb ass, not Pastrami!” Carbonari shouted at him.
“Yeah, yeah Boss, Pastorini,” Corliss quickly corrected himself. “Anyway, I heard something and went and looked. The bathroom window was up, so I ran over and looked out. These two opened the balcony door and looked out too. That was when we saw him on the ledge. We shouted for him to come back in, but he kept going and slipped and fell.”
Carbonari looked away from Corliss and glared at the twins. Corliss may not know their names, but he did. He knew the name of everybody who worked for him. One of the twins was named Gerald and the other Phil; but like Corliss, he couldn’t tell them apart either. “Gerald, Phil, is that what really happened up there? I swear to God; if you’re lying to me, I’ll castrate the both of you!” He knew the two big blond guards didn’t know how to lie to a man like him. Their heads were hanging down and he saw them glance at each other. “Look at me!” he screamed again. When they wouldn’t look him in the eyes, that was when Carbonari knew someone was bullshiting him. “I want the goddamned truth, now!”
“We don’t know what happened, Boss,” Gerald answered.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Carbonari asked, and then turned his rage back on Shaka Corliss. “You’re a dead man, Shaka. You threw him out the window, didn’t you?”
“No, no, Boss. I never touched him. We wuz nowhere near him. He climbed out the bathroom window, just like I said. We saw him on the ledge, but by then he was all the way at the far end. He pried the hallway window open. You know, that’s where the elevators and stairs are, and we saw him climb inside. Anyway, the next thing we knew, not a half minute later, he comes flying back out, headfirst, arms and legs swinging around like he was trying to swim or something, and he landed in the parking lot.”
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