After his stomach settled and a warm shower in the gym’s locker room relaxed him, Brack walked out famished and a little ashamed. As if to add insult to embarrassment, Tara said she had a bachelorette party to go to and took a rain check on Brack’s offer of dinner.
While Brack drove back to Mutt’s house to spend time with Shelby, Darcy called with a tip from one of her sources. So at nine o’clock that evening, he and Mutt sat in the Porsche watching the address of the exclusive club they’d been tipped about. Atlanta’s classic rock station played through the high-end speaker system.
They’d been parked maybe five minutes when the vehicle Darcy told Brack to watch for arrived.
The black Mercedes G63 SUV pulled to the curb, the rear door opened, and Kelvin Vito stepped out. Mutt recognized him from all the press coverage he’d received, both from his links to the underworld and from the charitable events he hosted to counter the former. Vito turned to extend a hand inside the open door. An African-American woman took his hand and exited the large SUV. Holding her head high, as a queen would, she resembled the photo Brack had seen in Regan’s bedroom. Thin, really too thin, Cassie’s sister wore a beautiful black dress with gold highlights. Arm in arm, the couple strolled into the private club followed by two very large, very muscular beefcakes. Rambo wannabes. And by the cut of their sports jackets, Brack could tell they covered more than muscle tissue.
“Well, I’ll be,” Mutt said. “Darcy was right. And there’s Regan.”
“So that’s her,” Brack said. This was all a lot of trouble for one very small woman.
Mutt reached for the door handle to get out.
Brack put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy there, cowboy.”
“Let’s get her so we can go on home,” he said.
“What about those two meatheads?” Brack asked. “They got heaters in shoulder rigs.”
“What you worried about, Opie? We handled worse than them before.”
“Yeah. But I don’t feel like being in a shootout today.”
Mutt shrugged and took out his vaporizer, which brought to mind Brack’s exercise routine with Tara. Somehow he didn’t feel like joining Mutt in lighting up a smoke. Instead, he remarked, “Shaft and Mike Hammer ride again.”
“Mike Hammer?” Mutt said. “I thought you wanted to be James Bond.”
“Hammer is more my style.”
“Yeah,” Mutt said. “Rough around the edges.”
The station commercial break ended and the wail of Prince’s guitar in the intro to “When Doves Cry” wafted through the speakers. RIP, Prince, Brack thought.
Mutt said, “We got to get in there.”
“They aren’t going anywhere.”
When the song ended Brack drove up to the entrance of the club. Slipping the valet a twenty to park the Porsche, he and Mutt bypassed the line and walked directly to the bouncer who manned the roped section designed for celebrities and those with enough cash to avoid waiting. Mutt slid the big man a bill and he unclasped the velvet rope to let them by. Their next stop was the window to pay the cover charge.
The young lady behind the glass might have been all of twenty-one. Mutt handed her two more bills identical to the one he’d slipped the bouncer. She nodded once with a tilt of her pretty little head, motioning the newcomers to move on.
As Mutt and Brack opened the double doors and entered the darkened nightclub, Brack marveled that this time it was his friend shelling out for cover charges. So far Mutt was in for one-fifty. And the evening was just getting started.
Like camera flash bulbs, spotlights and strobes bounced over the walls and the crowd at the speed of machine-gun fire. Mutt and Brack strolled casually to the bar, first, because Brack was thirsty, and second, so they’d have a place from which to observe and locate their target.
Brack ordered a club soda and lime and Mutt got a draft beer. He pulled out his vaporizer and took a few more puffs.
“The best thing about this,” he said, showing off the contraption, “is I can smoke anywhere I want.”
Not quite, but he had a point.
Taking in the crowd of millennials, Brack spotted their target and his entourage in an elevated far-corner booth.
Mutt saw them at the same time. “How you want to play this?”
“We’ll never get past the meatheads without some form of violence,” Brack said. “Not that I have too serious an issue with that. But let’s hold back. Sooner or later, Vito has to take a whiz.”
After another hit from his vaporizer, Mutt said, “I ain’t got nothin’ better to do, anyway.”
Across the room, Brack spotted a familiar face among a group of women, one of whom wore a tiara on her head.
Tara must have sensed his gaze and looked his way. She smiled, left the tiara wearer and the rest of her party, and made her way over.
Mutt noticed and turned his head toward Brack’s ear. “You better watch yourself with this one.”
Tara came up to Mutt and gave him a peck on the cheek and a hug, then did the same with Brack.
“What are you guys doing here?”
Brack mimicked the girl in the cover charge booth and merely gave a head nod in the direction of Vito and his crew.
“I figured as much,” she said. “He’s a real piece of work, you know.”
“I’ve been described that way myself,” Brack said.
“Yeah? Well, whatever you are or have done, I’m sure it pales in comparison to Kelvin Vito. He may look like a hip club owner who makes things happen. But he’s into a whole lot of very bad things from the skin trade to exotic animal poaching. It makes me so mad that we spend all this time and money to help people and to preserve endangered species, and he profits from the destruction of both.”
Mutt said, “We’re here for Regan.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen her out with him,” Tara said.
“You come here often?” Brack asked, instantly regretting the pick-up line phrasing.
She took it in stride. “My brother likes these places. So do some of my friends. If it wasn’t for them,” she said, motioning to the group, “I wouldn’t be here.”
“Opie and me was tryin’ to figure how to play this. Straight up or wit a slant.”
She said, “With Vito, better play the slant. In fact, the greater the angle, the better your chances. Like I said, he’s a real piece of work.”
Her advice resonated with Brack, although probably not how she thought it would.
Mutt looked at him. “What you thinkin’?”
Brack reached into his wallet, took out the valet ticket for the Porsche, and handed it to Mutt. “I’ll be right back. Get the car if something goes wrong.”
Mutt started to say something, but Brack stepped away too quickly to hear it and strode toward the target. He reasoned that if Vito was so sharp it took a pretty wild slant to fake him out, he must have prided himself on the angles. Playing this one like a head-on collision might be the only way to succeed. And since Brack didn’t live here or have to stay and suffer the consequences, what he was about to do was better done alone.
He got within a couple of feet of the elevated platform before the two meatheads came to their senses and rose to block him from stepping up to their level. They crossed their arms over their massive chests and stood with their feet apart.
Brack calculated he was half a foot shorter than each of them and about half as strong as either one. But the Marines had taught him to improvise, adapt, and overcome. These two seemingly immovable objects were about to get a lesson on what happened when they underestimated their opponent.
Another movie scene came to Brack’s mind. One from Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge.
The beefcake standing above Brack’s right arm put his hand on Brack’s shoulder and opened his mouth to say something. Brack jerked both his arms out in front
of him, grabbed each man by his crotch, and squeezed hard. So hard that the surprise in their faces turned to horror, then agony, all within two seconds. Both tried swinging at Brack’s arms, but succeeded only in losing their balance. They fell off the platform and landed with loud thumps.
The music might have stopped, but Brack hardly noticed. With both of them now out of the way, he had unrestricted access to Kelvin. And the arrogant jackass had the audacity to merely sit there and watch, as if he weren’t in any danger. He wasn’t, of course. Brack was already way out on a limb. If he harmed Vito but failed to kill him, there would be no place on earth where he’d be safe from the gangster’s unlimited resources.
“They were two of my best,” he said. “Take a seat.”
“No thanks,” Brack said.
Vito pursed his lips as if to consider. After a beat, he said, “Okay. So what can I do for you?”
Staring into Vito’s eyes without blinking, Brack said, “The young lady with you, Regan. Her sister is worried about her. A quick phone call letting her know everything is okay would go a long way to easing her burden.”
With amusement in his smile, Vito said, “You went through this whole exercise and all you want is for Regan to call her sister?”
“I do whatever it takes.”
Regan said, “I don’t have a sister.”
Neither Vito nor Brack made as if they heard her protest. Instead, Vito said, “For someone who beat up six of my guys already, Mr. Pelton, you sure are playing this fast and loose.”
So he did know who Brack was. “Yeah, well, I’d keep my head down if I was you.” Brack slowly reached into his pants pocket and took out a fat roll of hundreds he’d withdrawn from his own safe before he left Charleston. Cash always came in handy, like right now. He peeled ten bills off the roll and laid them on the table. “For any inconvenience I might have caused.”
Brack turned around to leave. One of the giants had gotten to his feet but was still hunched over. The other lay in the fetal position on the floor. Strolling past them, it occurred to Brack that most of his moves had come from all the movies he’d baked his brain watching when he should have been doing something his mother called “more constructive.”
Because he didn’t see Mutt or Tara, he headed for the front door. His Porsche was already waiting at the curb with Mutt in the driver’s seat. Tara sat in the back. As soon as Brack got in, Mutt revved the motor and got them out of there in a hurry.
Chapter Eight
Saturday night
A block down the road, Mutt said, “Da-amn Opie! I knew you had stones, but I didn’t think you’d do anything like that.”
“Me either,” Brack answered.
“You realize,” Tara said, “that he’s onto you now.”
“He already was.”
“And that you are in danger.”
“Nothing new.”
She asked, “And that thought didn’t occur to you while you were jeopardizing those two idiots’ ability to procreate?”
“I was simply doing the world a favor.”
“The monks who set themselves on fire in protest get better results than what you just did,” she said.
“Don’t be so quick to judge,” Brack said.
“Whatever,” she said. “My car is at the club. I’m going to have to get it eventually.”
“You want us to go back and drop you off now?” Brack asked.
“Of course not,” she said.
As he drove, Mutt said, “They gonna be lookin’ for us. We can’t go to my bar or Cassie’s restaurant.”
In the end, they went to a Waffle House not too far away and got three coffees and three pieces of pie. They sat there waiting out the danger and talking junk for two hours before heading back to the club and Tara’s parked SUV.
She hugged them both, lingering her embrace with Brack a tad longer, in his opinion, before heading away.
With her now safely away, Brack and Mutt proceeded back to the rental where Taliah and Shelby were.
On the way, Darcy called.
Brack answered. “Hey there.”
“Hey there, yourself,” she said almost gleefully. “I just heard two of Vito’s henchmen will have trouble fathering children. You are my hero.”
Realizing her definition of hero was in the “I will have enough news to report to keep me busy for the next month” sense, Brack said, “You’re welcome.”
Regan knew she was in trouble. The ride back to Vito’s apartment in the backseat of the Mercedes SUV was a quiet one. Up to this point, she’d thought she could keep the fact that her sister was looking for her away from him. Using his name, she’d sent a few of his minions to try to stop her sister and Mutt from asking questions and getting too close.
But this new player was the real business. Taking out Lonnie and Mike like that. No fear. Bringing it to Vito in a straight line. No one, but no one had spit in her man’s face before. Especially in public. Thinking about him aroused something inside her, the same feeling she’d felt when she first met Vito. That Vito already knew about this man was not good news for her. Even knew his name.
Vito spoke, breaking her train of thought.
“So,” he said, “when were you going to tell me your sister was looking for you?”
“I told you. I don’t have a sister.”
“Apparently this man Brack thinks you do.”
“He ain’t nothing.”
Vito said, “He took out Lonnie and Mike. Maybe they weren’t my best after all. But he isn’t ‘nothing,’ like you say. He can jeopardize everything.”
She touched his leg. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you about it before. I didn’t want to worry you.”
He took her hand in his. “Don’t you understand? If you are in danger, I want to protect you.”
Sunday morning, Brack had a long talk with Cassie. He felt she should know that Regan didn’t appear to be either missing or kidnapped.
“She gotta be hypnotized or something, Mr. Brack,” Cassie said. “My sister shouldn’t be with a man like that.”
As painful as he knew it would be to hear what Regan said about not having a sister, Brack nevertheless told her.
Cassie’s eyes watered. She wiped them and blew her nose.
He let her get it out.
She said, “There’s someone I want you to talk with, if you don’t mind.”
He didn’t mind. If she still wanted to pursue this, Brack wasn’t going to let Mutt try to handle it on his own. Not after he’d just kicked over the hornets’ nest.
Brack left Cassie and drove down Peachtree Street toward Buckhead, taking in the city he’d called home a very long time ago. The significant increase in population had brought a sprawling metropolis and everything that came with it.
Traffic wasn’t that horrible, especially for a Sunday. The real problem, as he saw it, was that any place he wanted to go was located across town from wherever he happened to be. That and Atlanta drivers behaved much more aggressively than the drivers on the South Carolina island he now lived. Here cars weaved in and out, drivers vying for any advantage by constantly changing lanes. Since he was seldom in a hurry, Brack rolled along just fast enough to keep a minimum distance between his front bumper and the rear of the car in front of him.
Mutt had to go to the restaurant to handle some restocking. Cassie had suggested Brack visit a women’s shelter she supported to talk with the director. Regan had not called her, of course. So after breakfast and a long walk with Shelby, Brack left him alone in Mutt’s house and arrived at the shelter in Buckhead five minutes early for his appointment.
The building was a large nondescript brick home a little north of the big money district. Brack pulled into visitor’s parking and approached the lobby, expecting to find a receptionist behind a desk. Instead, he entered a small room with white wal
ls and cheap gray tile. Between two hospital-type waiting room chairs, a small table held a phone. Opposite the entrance stood one very substantial door. A small tinted dome was mounted in a corner ceiling and probably housed a camera. After verifying his assumption that the door was locked, Brack picked up the receiver. He saw no card anywhere with printed instructions about calling anyone.
In place of a dial tone, a friendly female voice said, “May I help you?”
“I have an appointment to see Mrs. Royce.”
“Your name please?”
He gave it to her.
After a long moment, the voice said, “Please have a seat and someone will be with you shortly.”
The phone then went dead.
Another glance around the room revealed no magazines or wall-mounted flatscreen TV to hold a visitor’s attention. Brack sat in one of the chairs and waited.
Ten minutes later the fortified door opened. A stout woman a few inches shorter than him came into the room. Big glasses accentuated big eyes. Gray-streaked hair and a weathered face put her a decade or two older than him.
She smiled and held out a hand. “I’m Susanna Royce. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Pelton.”
Taking her offered hand, Brack said, “Please call me Brack.”
Finished with the formality, she said, “My office is on the second floor. I believe we should talk there.”
“Lead the way.”
She held the door for Brack, then guided him through the ground floor. They passed empty rooms that looked like hospital exam rooms, along with a lot of closed doors. Everyone Brack saw—and he counted about twenty between the entry door and the stairwell—was female.
They took the stairs. Cream-painted concrete block and steel walls surrounded them. The second floor’s cubicle inhabitants greeted them, and Mrs. Royce meandered through a maze to the end of a hall and an actual office. Hers, Brack presumed.
Motioning him in, she closed the door behind them. Her decently sized office held a large black desk and two visitor chairs. Against the wall by the door sat a couch. She settled heavily into one end of it. Brack took the other end and they faced each other.
Big City Heat Page 6
