FireWatch

by Scott Blade

  Portman noticed. But it wasn’t Portman’s only weapon. He had a backup weapon, a German revolver. He kept it tucked down in an ankle holster on his left boot. And right then, his left hand was out of sight from Ryman’s view.

  Portman inched his left hand down his leg, slowly. He kept it within grabbing distance of the backup gun. One quick but concealed reach and tug, and he could have it out and ready to fire.

  He was probably being stupid. The wife’s story was probably a lie, but he felt safer this way.

  Ryman took his hand back and placed it on the window frame. He leaned against it.

  He said, “To tell you the truth, Sheriff. I’m distraught.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because my partner is dead. I think you know that.”

  Portman nodded and said, “You’re partners with Mike Lee?”

  “Not partners. He was one of my men. A new member to our team, but still a brother.”

  Portman said, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  He knew about his partner’s death very quickly. Which made Portman inch farther toward his gun.

  Ryman nodded.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I want justice, Sheriff.”

  Portman stayed quiet.

  “I heard that Lee burned to death in his house and the wife survived?”

  Portman nodded. He couldn’t deny that part.

  “She killed him.”

  “We don’t know that. We’ll know more after we’ve conducted a full investigation.”

  “We? There’s no ‘we’ here, Sheriff. I can see that. You guys are way out here in the sticks. The only one doing the investigating will be you, right?”

  “And the county fire investigators. First they have to rule it a homicide and arson. Then we’ll coordinate with them to investigate.”

  Ryman shook his head.

  “Cut the crap, Sheriff! You know who I am. We will be coordinating this investigation.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Lee is one of us. One of our own. You know something about that? Don’t ya?”

  Ryman took another long drag off the cigarette. Exhaled another puff of smoke up into the air over the police cruiser.

  He asked, “How many investigations you handle like this? Way out here?”

  Portman stayed quiet.

  “I’d bet the answer is none. Zero.”

  Portman stayed quiet.

  Ryman changed the subject. He asked, “How many guys you got here?”

  “Enough,” Portman said.

  “I got an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why don’t you turn her over to me? We’ll take care of it. I got more guys than you. More resources. And we can get this over with quickly and neatly and quietly.”

  Portman said nothing to that.

  Ryman said, “This is a small community you got here. My understanding is that Mrs. Lee grew up here. You might not be partial. You might’ve known her.”

  “I guarantee you that justice will be served for your guy. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Portman’s hand hovered over his ankle gun as close as he could without making it obvious.

  Ryman leaned in a little closer. He stopped his face just outside the window. He half whispered, “Let me have her.”

  “You know I can’t do that. We got procedures here too. You’ll just have to wait for the conclusion of our investigation.”

  Ryman paused a long beat, kept his stare on Portman. Then he moved back out of the window. Stood up straight. Eased away from the cruiser.

  He smoked the rest of the cigarette.

  He asked, “She here? In your jail?”

  Portman couldn’t quite reach his ankle gun without bending forward more. Which would’ve been obvious to a seasoned agent like Ryman because it would’ve been obvious to anyone. He knew that.

  He said, “She’s not here. We don’t have a jail cell here.”

  “No cells? You serious?”

  “Not for women, I mean. We don’t get a lot of women criminals out here. Mostly drunk men. You know, bar fights and all.”

  Ryman took the cigarette out of his mouth, held on to it.

  “We couldn’t throw her in the cell with a couple of drunk guys, now could we? That wouldn’t be very respectful of her civil rights and all.”

  “So, where's she at?”

  Portman thought about it. He almost told him that he couldn’t answer that. But Ryman wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer. Instead, he said, “County. The women’s prison. Of course.”

  Sounded right. County bureaucracy and regulations and all. As a DEA agent, surely Ryman knew a lot about bureaucracy and regulations.

  Ryman nodded. He eased away. Stepping back, one foot at a time. Keeping his eyes locked on Portman. Walking backward until he got halfway back to the Tahoe. There he spun around. He put his Ray-Bans back on, tossed the cigarette out onto the gravel, and left it.

  He opened the Tahoe and hopped up into the driver’s seat. He fired up the engine, backed out, and drove away. Portman watched and waited.

  After he was sure that Ryman was gone, he returned his left hand to the steering wheel and took his foot off the brake and wound around the lot. He drove back onto the street, orbited around the stationhouse and parked in the guarded lot.

  He shut off his car and got out. He unsnapped the buckle on his hip holster, just to feel safer. He walked in through the back police entrance, threaded past an empty desk, and waved at the one officer in the bullpen.

  The deputy said, “You’re back. Finally.”

  The deputy looked at his wristwatch and said, “I’ve been here all day. I was supposed to go on break three hours ago.”

  “I’ve been dealing with the fire.”

  “Can I go now?”

  Portman stopped halfway back to his office. He said, “I need you to stay overnight. Maybe.”

  “Another double?”

  “I only got the two deputies. I need you. Unless you want me to only have one deputy?”

  The deputy’s arms slumped down to his sides. He said, “Can I at least take a break now?”

  “Yeah. Go. Be back in an hour,” he said, but he knew it would take him longer. He counted on it.

  Portman waited for the deputy to leave and then he looped around a couple of empty desks to his office and opened the door.

  The wife was awake now. She stared up at him, silent. Her black eye didn’t look bad. It had settled into a dark bruise, curved into her eye socket.

  Portman said, “You might be telling me the truth.”

  CHAPTER 7

  WIDOW LEANED HIS BACK up against the inside wall, inside the abandoned storefront’s doorway. He was growing tired of waiting around.

  On his left side, he had a to-go coffee cup that he had bought at the Korean store this time. Not the McDonald’s. He drank it all down. He didn’t want to keep going inside the Korean store for coffee in case he missed his chance to see the thugs. He didn’t want to be inside the store when they returned. That would give him a disadvantage. So, he just waited.

  Widow hadn’t been on a stakeout in long time. Doing a stakeout, like sniper work or sharpshooting, was a perishable skill. But his had not perished. Not yet. It was still right there in his arsenal.

  Thus far he had seen multiple cars drive the street, going one way or the other. He had seen pedestrians walking, stopping, turning, and moving on. He had seen actual homeless people passing by. Some stopped and checked him out. Others ignored him.

  One guy held up a sign indicating that he was a World War II vet, which could have been possible. Maybe. If the vet was a hundred. Which this guy wasn’t. Clearly. He looked fifty years old, at most.

  Later, Widow saw another guy walk by holding a Vietnam vet sign. Which looked plausible. At least the age matched up. And then there were two separate Iraq vets. One of which was a woman. All of which he did not doubt.

  None of them spoke to hi
m. They all passed right on by. Widow wasn’t sure if this meant that he was doing a good job blending in or a terrible one.

  The homeless in the area seemed to be territorial, like salesmen. This spot was theirs, but no one said a word to him.

  He waited.

  The sun was up in the sky, not high like noon, but somewhere between four or five p.m. he figured. Probably closer to five than four.

  Widow listened to the city sounds of distant honking cars, a barking dog, and blips indicating that the blind could cross the nearest intersection safely.

  He looked right, down the street, and saw one of those low-rider cars coming by for a second time. It had big chrome rims, a front grille to match, and obnoxious fire red paint. It slipped past him. He watched.

  The car was older than the driver and the passengers it carried. But it was better kept than all of them combined.

  It looked like it was waxed weekly. It was loved. It was taken care of.

  The stereo system inside must’ve been that aftermarket crap with double everything. Double speakers. Double woofers. Double bass.

  The thing thumped and bounced up and down the street. Widow could hear music that had so much bass in it that he could not discern whether it was rap music or heavy metal or simple African drums, just cranked all the way up. Full bass.

  The car was a two-door sedan. It was all metal, from the last generation of muscle cars still made of metal. Maybe it was a Monte Carlo or a Cutlass or whatever. The only things that Widow noticed that concerned him were the three bullet holes in the trunk lid. All three were lined in a tight parameter. The metal turned outward. Which told him that someone had shot them from inside the trunk.

  He studied them as the car passed again for the third time. This time, the driver slowed just in front of Widow and looked his way. Looking him over. And clearing him of being any kind of cop. Which technically he wasn’t. Not anymore. But, the guy wasn’t totally off.

  Widow looked away. Kept his eyes half closed like he was drifting off to sleep. Something that homeless people did anytime, anywhere.

  The car moved on and stopped on the diagonal, just down the street, in front of the Korean store. Widow watched the driver park the car. He stayed in his seat. The engine ran idle. The passengers all got out. Three big but scrawny guys, all sticks and bones, popped up and out of the passenger door, one after the other. The first one had to bend the seat forward so the other two could climb out of the back.

  Widow watched.

  Two of the men were pale white, one of them almost lily colored. The other man was a black guy covered in tattoos. The driver was behind a window of black tint. Widow could see the top of his head because he had left the window cracked while he puffed on a cigarette, or maybe a marijuana blunt. The smoke peeked out and swirled up over the car.

  The smell wafted and carried across the street.

  Marijuana. No doubt about it. Weed had a distinguished odor that Widow knew well. Not because he smoked it. Only because he had worked in the Navy, after all. Some guys smoked it recreationally. He didn’t approve. He didn’t disapprove. It wasn’t his place to judge. Live and let live had always been his personal motto, with one caveat. Live and let live, unless you aren’t letting live; then he might just have to retaliate.

  The three men walked into the Korean store. Each of them with a stupid swagger that Widow had heard called gangsta. Whatever that meant.

  He saw at least one gun bulge in the back of the only black guy’s blue jeans. Stuffed into his waistband. It was probably a Glock. Definitely a nine-millimeter. No way was he going to be sporting anything bigger. And Widow could clearly see a magazine lip sticking out of the butt of the gun.

  Desert Eagles had magazines, like other Magnum firearms. And these gangsta types liked Desert Eagles just as much as third-world warlords did. But this guy was too scrawny and his jeans were too baggy and loose to be carrying a gun like that.

  A Desert Eagle, fully loaded, would’ve pulled him to the ground. Certainly, his pants would’ve dropped down to his ankles, belt or no belt.

  Widow didn’t want to engage these guys inside the Korean store. He didn’t want to cause more damage than they already had. He also couldn’t let them cause any kind of serious harm to the owners. He got up from the doorway and kicked off some dirty clothes that he had piled over his legs like blankets for extra effect.

  Feeling that he had no choice, he crossed the street. He stuffed the paperback of Fire Season in his back pocket and left behind the Grisham book. He was done with it.

  Widow took his empty paper coffee cup with him.

  THE DRIVER LOOKED FORWARD and then back to his left. The homeless guy who had been sitting in the abandoned storefront back down the street was gone.

  The driver looked in his rearview, saw no one. There was just a single car down the street. Left turn blinker was on. It flickered.

  Then he heard a rapping on his driver’s side window.

  He leaned forward, changed his blunt from his left hand to his right and rolled down the window, manually. He rolled it down all the way.

  A tall homeless guy stood there, waiting for him to roll the window down. The guy had a paper cup out in front of him. He was mumbling incoherently.

  The driver said, “Beat it, homeboy!”

  Widow said, “Change. Got any change.”

  He hobbled around and fidgeted like he was either drunk or coming down from a bad high or was missing most of his marbles, or all the above.

  The driver repeated, “Beat it!” He reached into the front of his waistband, right hand, and pulled out a Glock 17. The blunt was tucked between his fingers and the Glock’s custom grip.

  The whole gun was customized. Not in the way that Widow respected. Most of the original exterior parts had been replaced with identical parts in fire red colors. The grip, the slider, the sights, even the trigger were fire red, like the car.

  That was enough to make Widow vomit. Which helped because he inched back to the rear of the car, retreating the way he had come. The driver watched in the side mirror as Widow stopped at the rear bumper and dropped his hand on the trunk lid, like he was steadying himself. Then he heaved over the back of the car like he was hurling.

  He made all the usual sounds.

  The driver cursed and dropped the blunt into the car’s ashtray. He popped the door open. It creaked on old hinges. He hauled himself up and out. And walked back to the heaving homeless man.

  “Hey, bro! This my car!”

  Just then, on movements so quick they looked like real-life quick edits, Widow pitched forward and then back upright with a right hook that he had already been preparing down out of sight.

  His fist jammed right into the guy’s teeth, which had been covered over by a chrome grill that matched his car. The grill broke and cracked and shattered and tore apart. Instead of reinforcing his front teeth, like a consumer who bought it because a dentist said it was required to fix his teeth would probably expect, it was the grill that ripped his two front teeth out by the roots. No protection at all. It was a result of the right amount of pressure and torque and the size of a big fist, Widow figured.

  The driver dropped his Glock and bent over like someone had dropped a cinder block on his head. He heaved blood and teeth and grill fragments. Widow thought he saw gum particles.

  “Oh, man! Oh, man! My teeth!” was what he had tried to say. Only it came out all fragmented and stuttered and robotic and garbled, like the letters were out of order. But Widow had gotten accustomed to understanding guys who had terrible articulation. Some of them even had the same kind of trouble as this guy had.

  Widow stepped down on the Glock, a big foot in a big shoe that wasn’t budging.

  He grabbed a tuft of the guy’s hair, which wasn’t much. He jerked the guy’s head back and looked him dead in the eyes.

  He asked, “You Capone?”

  “Nah, man! He back at the church!”

  “The church?”

  “Y
eah, man! Church! The throne room!”

  Throne room? Widow thought.

  “Where’s this church?”

  “It’s over on Ninth Street. Everybody know the church!”

  Chung didn’t know it. Then again, Chung wasn’t a criminal.

  Widow asked, “Is it an actual church?”

  “Condemned! Old place.”

  Widow smiled. Then in one violent motion, he slammed the guy’s face right into the side of the car. All metal. Last of its kind. American made. A better generation of car.

  The driver bounced off the metal, hit the street and the blacktop. He was out cold.

  Widow grabbed the guy’s head, moved it and his neck so that he wouldn’t drown on his own blood. Widow didn’t want to kill the guy. Although he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it either.

  Live and let live, unless you don’t do the let live part; then he had to retaliate.

  He picked up the Glock 17, which made him embarrassed to be holding a fire red gun in the first place. Then he ejected the magazine. Checked the loadout. Checked the chamber. It was empty. He dry-fired the weapon. It worked. He returned the magazine and chambered a bullet.

  He checked up and down the street. No one came running. No backup. No cops. No witnesses who cared. No sound of sirens. Nothing.

  He turned and went to the Korean store. Put his back to the outside wall and pivoted on his foot and peered in through the open door. The three thugs were inside and pushing Chung around. Widow couldn’t see Su-Jin.

  One of the guys said, “Where’s ya ole lady?”

  Another said, “She back there somewhere?”

  The third one said, “Don’t make us check it out.”

  The black guy pulled his Glock out and waved it around. He didn’t point it at Chung, which was good. But it added a dangerous element that Widow was hoping to avoid. A gun out raised the stakes much, much higher.

  Widow saw nothing had gone a step too far. Not yet. At that moment, the gangster wannabes were poking and prodding at Chung for the money that they felt was due them. But they hadn’t gone far enough as to shoot anyone. Not yet.