THE THOUSAND DOLLAR CONTRACT: Colt Ryder Is Back In His Most Explosive Adventure Yet!

by J. T. Brannan

  Chapter Five

  I sipped on my beer and took a bite of my sandwich, a monster known as the ‘Astronomer’ – roast beef, pastrami, salami, cheese and hot sauce.

  Killing made some people nauseated; it always made me hungry.

  ‘Hungry?’ Christine Cooper asked with a raised eyebrow as I struggled to chew the huge amount of food I’d stuffed into my mouth. She was trying to be lighthearted, but I could see that she was nervous and I wondered what she had found on that recording.

  I nodded as I continued to chew. ‘It’s been a hard day,’ I said when I’d finished. I wasn’t lying, either; one way or another, the day had been emotional, and I took another swig of beer.

  The BU Pub was, just as Christine had told me, on the lower floor of the Castle, an impressive Tudor Revival-style mansion owned by the university and used for concerts, events and special occasions. The pub itself was of the English type, and was apparently the only place on campus that served alcohol. According to Christine, its medieval appearance led to it playing host to the Knight’s Quest, where adventurous students attempted to sample all of the pub’s fifty different beers. Successful drunkards were ‘knighted’ in a special ceremony. Unsuccessful ones, presumably, were transported quickly to hospital to have their stomachs pumped.

  I stretched out in my chair, working out the kinks from the beatings my body had endured over the past couple of days.

  ‘Did your joints just pop?’ Christine asked as she took a sip of her own drink.

  I hadn’t heard them – or even felt them – but I had no reason to suspect her to be mistaken. ‘Maybe,’ I said with a smile. Hell, my organs would probably be popping soon, the rate I was going.

  After the fight at the Video Vault, I’d headed west in the mafia Escalade until I’d hit Amory Street, then hooked south until I crossed a set of train tracks, finally abandoning the damaged vehicle near Johnson Park on the far side.

  I’d known that the two men I’d left standing wouldn’t be able to catch me, but I’d expected another vehicle or two to pull round from the front of the video store. In the end, I’d only seen the front end of a black sedan in my rearview as I whistled down Amory; I’d got too much of a head start for them to catch me, and I lost them as soon as I crossed the tracks.

  I’d then quickly found another vehicle, hotwired it and drove it back to my apartment to get changed; after all, I didn’t think it appropriate to meet Christine with my shirt covered in blood and brain tissue.

  I’d also wanted to see if Kane was there, and was disappointed to see that he wasn’t. It troubled me, and I hoped he was okay.

  I didn’t spend long at the apartment, and used the same car to drive back towards the university; making sure not to leave it close to my actual destination, I abandoned it in the parking lot of Fenway Park and walked the rest of the way to my rendezvous.

  ‘So,’ I said to the professor, wanting to get down to business at last, ‘how did you manage to get on with the translation? Did you get anywhere?’

  Again, that nervous look. ‘Yes,’ she answered warily. ‘Yes, I did. But . . . look, I’m really sorry, but there wasn’t anything on there about any kidnapping, nothing that might be a clue. At least, I don’t think so, anyway.’

  ‘But you have the translation?’ I pressed.

  She nodded and reached into a briefcase, pulling out some typewritten sheets of paper. She handed them to me over the table, then took another drink of her white wine.

  List as directed, the text began, correct as of twelfth September.

  Morrissey’s on L Street, business acquired.

  1482 to 1520 Columbia Road, properties acquired.

  Properties on Deady Lane, deal reached with landlord – ownership expected within two weeks.

  The list went on and on, twelve minutes of speech transposed into page upon page of Russian mafia real estate deals. There were literally hundreds of them, all littered around the Old Harbor area.

  Some acquisitions seemed perfectly legal, whereas with some of the others I could sense the cold, hard hand of mob violence in the deals.

  Here was one entry, for instance –

  Hardy’s, takeaway restaurant on Marine Road. Still no movement from owner, building incinerated. Will seek to buy remains from insurance company.

  Gerry’s café was there too, in the middle of the extensive list –

  Thistle Café on M Street proving a problem, recommend forcible eviction by end of month if no change.

  I shuddered at the words, knowing what ‘forcible eviction’ meant.

  Death, for Gerry and his family.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a map in there, do you?’ I asked, gesturing at Christine’s briefcase as I finished off my beer and called for another.

  ‘Way ahead of you,’ the professor said, pulling out a city map of Boston and laying it out on the table. To my amazement, she’d already highlighted the properties mentioned on the recording, and it was immediately obvious that the Russians were trying to acquire or otherwise control all of the real estate around the Old Harbor area. They’d almost succeeded too, from the look of things; there were just the odd pockets of resistance, like Gerry’s café on M Street.

  ‘You seem awfully interested in that map, for someone investigating a kidnapping,’ Christine said, and I realized I’d been so excited that I’d forgotten my own cover story.

  ‘I’m just trying to find out where they might be holding him,’ I said, knowing how weak it sounded even as the words left my mouth.

  ‘Come on,’ she chided, ‘sell that bullshit to someone else, okay? Now level with me – what are you really doing here?’

  I sighed. She wasn’t a professor for nothing, I supposed.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. No, there’s been no kidnapping.’ She was about to say something, but I ploughed on. ‘And no, I’m not a PI either, the badge is fake.’

  ‘So what the hell are you then?’ she asked, anger flashing across her face at being used. I had to expect her to be angry, of course; but she was still there with me, and still talking, so perhaps I still had a chance.

  ‘I help people,’ I said simply. ‘They hire me, pay me to help them. And this time, I’ve been hired by one of these businesses the Russian mob is shaking down.’

  ‘Hired to do what?’ she asked. ‘What good can one man do?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing too bad so far. The business wants protection, but of course I can’t offer that indefinitely; the only real way I have of helping them is to dismantle the Russian organization, give them bigger things to worry about than buying up real estate.’

  ‘And you can do that by yourself?’ she asked doubtfully.

  ‘Not by myself,’ I said as I held her gaze. ‘That’s why I needed you.’

  ‘Right,’ she said with not a little scorn. ‘One man with a broken nose and a fake PI badge, and a university professor. I bet the Russian mafia is quaking in their boots.’

  I smiled; perhaps she hadn’t yet heard about the trouble at Oksana’s Russian Steam Bath, or at the Video Vault. I hadn’t checked the news myself, in fact. But even though the Ovcharka and his gang might not be ‘quaking in their boots’, they would definitely know they had a fight on their hands.

  ‘Why did you lie to me?’ she asked, obviously upset.

  I shrugged. ‘Look,’ I told her, ‘I’m sorry, okay? I needed that translation doing, and most people don’t respond too quickly or positively to people who walk in off the street – unless those people carry a badge of some sort. And,’ I admitted, ‘I thought that a woman like you might be more motivated to help on a kidnapping case than with investigating protection rackets and shady property deals.’

  She finished her glass, poured some more wine from the bottle as she continued to watch me. ‘You might be right,’ she said eventually. ‘But I don’t like being used.’

  ‘Who does?’ I asked. ‘But I had to do it, to get what I wanted.’

&
nbsp; ‘And did you get what you wanted?’ she asked, tapping the transcript of the recording that lay on the table between our dinner plates, and the map that now lay on top. ‘Was this what you wanted?’

  ‘I didn’t know what I wanted,’ I said. ‘But now that I’ve seen what this is, the answer is yes. This helps a lot, fills in a lot of pieces in the puzzle.’

  ‘So this gang is hoping to do a deal, right?’ Christine said, and I could tell that at least part of the reason she seemed to have forgiven me was that she was now as intrigued as I was.

  ‘A deal?’ I asked.

  She nodded her head. ‘Sure. They’re not just doing this speculatively, are they? There must be someone out there – a developer, contractor, you know what I mean – with plans for the Old Harbor waterfront. Big money deal, like with the old Seaport District. Redevelop it, gentrify it, you know? Bring in some luxury hotels, condos, shopping malls, attractions, you name it.’

  I nodded my head, having already come to the same conclusion.

  ‘So the question you should be asking,’ Christine continued, ‘is who’s making those plans to redevelop the area? If you can find that out, that might just give you some leverage over the Russians.’

  Damn, I thought, she’s one smart cookie. Remind me to work with a professor again.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a DVD case, the one I’d taken from the Video Vault, my eyebrows raised in question. ‘Maybe there’ll be something on there that might help?’ I asked.

  Christine laughed, and sipped some more of her wine. ‘You’re a cheeky bastard,’ she said, but she still put her hand out for the disc, and I handed it over.

  ‘Meet you here for breakfast?’ I asked with a smile.

  She sighed, and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Hell,’ she said after a moment’s pause, her gaze dropping back to mine. ‘Sure. Why not?’ She put the disc into her briefcase. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Chapter Six

  I met Gerry Cahoon later that evening, on a bench on Harbor Walk, the promenade that ran parallel to William J. Day Boulevard. The Old Harbor was clear and open ahead, and we sat looking at the water.

  ‘Your family safe?’ I asked.

  ‘Yah,’ Gerry said in his strong Boston accent. ‘The police have still got the café closed down, so my wife and the kids have gone to visit some relatives in San Francisco for a few days.’

  ‘Sensible,’ I said.

  ‘Yah,’ Gerry agreed, his mind troubled. ‘So, it’s a ‘forcible eviction’ then, is it?’ he asked eventually.

  I nodded. ‘You knew it would come to that, in the end.’

  ‘I guess so,’ he said, staring out across the waterfront. ‘So this is what it’s all about, eh?’ he asked. ‘Waterfront property, like Seaport all over again.’

  ‘Looks that way,’ I said.

  ‘But you can do something about it?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ I told him.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been doing a good job so far,’ Gerry said happily. ‘A real one-man beat-down, huh?’

  ‘I’ve been lucky so far,’ I said. ‘But that might not last. That’s why I wanted to meet you, to warn you. If I don’t finish these guys, you should make preparations to sell. Just sell, and get the hell out of here.’

  ‘You know I’ll never do that,’ Gerry said, and I admired his fortitude, while at the same time questioning his judgement.

  ‘So what’s your plan?’ he asked after another long pause.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve got some leads to follow up,’ I said, wondering what the new DVD would reveal. Christine was going to start looking into who might be interested in developing the Old Harbor area too, who stood to gain the most. She had contacts that I didn’t, and I wondered what she might be able to find out.

  ‘Well, if you need help, I know a couple of guys on the force.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I trust the force,’ I told him.

  He nodded his head in understanding. ‘Yah, most of ‘em are bent, alright. But there are still a couple of honest ones.’

  ‘Couldn’t they have helped you?’

  ‘They tried, but what are they going to do? Take on the Russians by themselves? They don’t get the right back-up from further up the chain, if you know what I mean.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But if you’re in a spot, they might be able to help out.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ I told him, already discounting the idea; my plans were seldom lawful enough to warrant involving the police. I’d probably get in as much trouble as the mafia boys.

  Gerry was about to leave, but I put a hand on his arm. ‘One more thing,’ I told him. ‘Have you ever heard of a guy called Mickey Quinn?’

  Gerry laughed. ‘Mickey Quinn?’ he said. ‘Of course I have, everybody round here knows Mickey.’

  ‘I’ve heard him and his boys are still active round here, is that true?’

  Gerry shook his head. ‘Nah, not really. It’s like I said, they made a lot from that Seaport development. Guess that’s where the Russians got the idea, right? Some of his gang still hang around here, but they’ve got no muscle, no more hard-hitters. They’ve ‘gentrified’, just like Seaport. Businessmen now, more than anything.’

  ‘This Quinn guy, he’s happy to lie down for the Russians?’

  ‘I have no idea what’s going through Mickey’s mind,’ Gerry said. ‘Haven’t seen him in years. But I’m sure he’s looking after his own business just fine, is our Mickey.’

  I nodded my head, stood, and extended my hand, which Gerry shook.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ I told him, and walked off through the fading light as night started to descend on the harbor.

  When I got back to my apartment, I saw Kane waiting expectantly for me outside, tail wagging.

  I was overjoyed that he was okay and started to rub the soft fur under his chin, pulling his head close to my chest. ‘Hey boy,’ I said, ‘how you doing? How you doing?’

  Kane emitted a low growl of pleasure, but pulled away, head pointing off down the road, the growl turning to a whine.

  I knew what it meant; it meant that Kane had followed that car from the video store, knew where it had gone, and wanted to take me there.

  Damn, he was good.

  ‘Okay boy,’ I said. ‘Okay. Give me five minutes.’

  I left him waiting in the street as I entered the apartment block and raced up to my room.

  If I was being led to a Russian mafia base, I was going to take all the weapons I had.

  Chapter Seven

  Darkness had fallen by the time Kane and I arrived in Dorchester Heights, and I watched the building across the road from the shadows of Thomas Park.

  Marion Manor Nursing Home was a gigantic building that took up an entire city block. Its main entrance was right over the other side, on Dorchester Street; we were watching the rear of the building, which was where Kane had directed me.

  I’d checked the front, seen the huge parking lot filled with all sorts of makes and models, of different ages and states of repair. Some would belong to staff, others to clients or visitors. But I didn’t see any black Mercedes or Cadillacs that would belong to the Ovcharka or his Bratva.

  Around the side, though, up a small one-way road, there was another bay for cars; and here, I did see some familiar-looking vehicles – including the one that Kane had followed earlier that day.

  There was a fire exit next to the bay, but Kane had led me round to the other side of the block, nudged me in the direction of a fenced-off area filled with garbage skips and a couple of old cars. I could see basement windows from this side, and knew that was where Kane was telling me to look.

  I watched for a long time, waiting to see if there were any comings or goings from the basement. There was a fire door on the left hand side, and over to the right, at the bottom of a black metal fire escape, was a large square hole in the ground, covered by tarpaulin and sectioned off with cones. There was machinery nearby, which had evidentl
y been used for the excavation, and a pile of rubble off to one side. It looked like the nursing home was having a basement entrance built, but the job was far from finished.

  It started to rain; a light drizzle at first but soon coming down harder. It was still warm though, sticky and humid; but it would provide better cover for me, when I eventually made my move, and I welcomed it.

  After watching for long enough to satisfy my paranoia, I let Kane lead the way across the road. He slipped through a jagged hole low down in the fence, but it was too small for me and – with Kane watching the street for me, to make sure the coast was clear – I jumped up to the top and swung myself over, landing easily on the other side.

  I was wearing a jacket tonight which – while it made me even hotter – helped to cover the two Škorpion machine pistols that hung from shoulder slings underneath my armpits. It restricted my movement slightly, but I wanted the extra firepower.

  Kane avoided the fire exit and instead guided me toward the excavated hole, the raindrops bouncing high off the stretched tarpaulin that covered it.

  He led me to it, nudging the edge of it with his muzzle.

  Clever boy. Not only had he tracked the Russian, he’d also managed to find a way in.

  I took his suggestion, withdrawing one of the Škorpions with one hand while pulling back the edge of the tarp with the other.

  The black, gaping hole below beckoned and – trusting Kane’s judgement – I eased myself down into the unknown beyond.

  I dropped to the ground, ten feet below the level of the first basement; there was about a foot of standing water down there, and I made a splash as I came down, flexing at my ankles, knees and hips to lessen the impact.

  I froze in the darkness, weapon up and aimed, worried that the noise of my landing might have been heard. I waited, rooted to the spot, ready for anyone coming to see what had happened.

  But eventually, when nothing happened, I relaxed and started to explore my new environment.