by Sean Lynch
“Marisol Hernandez was a child.”
“You shoot me you’re throwing away a lot of money.”
“I don’t give a shit about money. You’ve given me plenty of reasons to kill you that money won’t fix. I could kill you because I swore an oath to an honorable woman. I could kill you because you killed a B-girl named Holly just for speaking with me. I could kill you because you tried to kill me; three times. Hell, I could even kill you for trashing my truck, or ruining my chances for something good with a decent lady.”
Quintana’s quivering lip became a snarl. “You’re going to shoot me over that fucking whore, aren’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“I figured you were smarter than that.”
“You figured wrong.”
“Killing me gets you nothing.”
“Ain’t doing it for me. Doing it for Marisol. She would have wanted me to.”
“Fuck that little whore, and fuck you!” Quintana spat.
“She wasn’t a whore,” I said.
I shot him once in the face below the nose. He dropped to the runway like the overflowing sack of shit he was.
I leaned over and grabbed Quintana’s head by his dyed hair. I turned it around and checked for an exit wound. Sure enough, there was a golf-ball sized portion of the back of his skull missing. The .45 slug had passed entirely through, and was somewhere out in the San Francisco Bay.
I holstered my gun. Using my flashlight, I scoured the wet ground until I found the ejected .45 shell casing. I tossed Kathy the car keys.
“Back it up and recover the two expended shotgun rounds,” I told her. She did.
I put on a pair of latex gloves. Then I searched Quintana’s body. I took both his cell phones, as well as the pre-paid phone I’d tossed him. I found another thirty-seven hundred dollars in his fat wallet. I didn’t find a cell phone on the body of the other cop. I checked their car next.
There was nothing of interest inside the vehicle’s cabin. Inside the trunk of Quintana’s City-of-Oakland issued Crown Victoria, however, I found two handguns, a plastic sandwich bag containing several coin-sized bags of what looked like methamphetamine, and another cache of money in a paper bag similar to the one he’d offered me. He’d been holding out.
I grabbed the money from the trunk, along with the damp bag of money still on the hood. I left the guns and dope. I walked over to my Mustang. Kathy had the engine running and the heater going. I was wet and cold. She was smoking a Marlboro. I sat in the passenger seat and cracked open all three phones. I removed the SIM cards and pocketed them. Then I got out of the car again and threw all three phones into the San Francisco Bay.
I got back into the car and Kathy pulled away. When her smoke was finished, she put it out with her fingers and pocketed the butt without being told.
Kathy kept the headlights off until we were away from the runways and back on Main Street. She followed Main to Atlantic Avenue and turned north on Webster Street. We entered the Posey trans-bay tube, which runs underneath the Alameda-Oakland Estuary. When we emerged from the tunnel in Oakland, we were only a couple of blocks from the Nimitz Freeway.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Take the Nimitz south,” I told her.
“You really think there’s a hundred and twenty grand in that bag?” Kathy said.
“Who knows?” I answered her. “I found another bag full of cash in his car. We’ll count it up when we get to my place. Unless you have other plans?”
“You got something to drink at your place?”
“I do.”
“Then your place sounds swell,” she said.
“I didn’t think you’d want to end the night without a drink,” I said.
“You really are a detective,” Kathy said.
Chapter 33
By the time we reached my house the rain was really coming down. Kathy parked the Mustang in my driveway. I shut off the alarm and we went inside.
“I didn’t figure you for the Little House on the Prairie type,” Kathy said, looking around.
“I like my privacy,” I said.
“So I see. You mentioned a drink.”
I took her wet coat, took off my equally soggy jacket, and went into the kitchen. She set my Mossberg on the table. I tossed the two bags of money next to the shotgun.
“I’ve got bourbon and beer,” I said.
“Bourbon over ice,” she said.
“Coming up. Make yourself useful and start counting, will you?”
“With pleasure. You mind if I smoke?”
“Knock yourself out.”
I poured Kathy a stiff jolt of Beam over ice, and popped open a Mirror Pond for myself. I was afraid anything stronger than beer would render me unconscious. I was bushed; it had been an eventful twenty-four hours.
I set the drink down next to her as she lit a cigarette. I also put out an ashtray and gave her a pair of latex gloves; money is dirty. Kathy swallowed a generous portion of Kentucky bourbon and got to it.
I sat down at the table and picked up the Mossberg. I carefully extracted the remaining eight live shotgun shells from the magazine tube. It can be done without cycling the action. I wiped the shotgun’s exterior with an oiled cloth. I’d give the weapon a thorough cleaning and oiling tomorrow. For now, I merely wanted to prevent oxides from forming.
“You really kill seven dudes within the last day?” Kathy asked around her Marlboro, without looking up from her counting.
“Eight, counting the one you did for me tonight.” I looked across the table at her. “By the way; I forgot to say thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said, still without looking up from the money. “Seven notches in one day; you must have some mad gunfighting skills.”
“I’m still breathing; that’s skill enough.”
“That was a slick trick, having me lie under the car in a pot-hole obscured by a dark blanket. The approaching headlights wouldn’t pick up anything under the car but a black void, especially at night. It would look like shadow.” She glanced up at me. “What did you do in the military?”
“Infantry.”
“Figures,” she said. She turned her attention back to the money.
I noticed my answering machine’s red light was blinking. There were two messages. I pushed the ‘play’ button.
“Chance, this is Russ. What the fuck, man? You okay, brother? You need some back-up? I’ll wait to hear from you. Call me.” Russ had obviously gotten my earlier message.
“One of your gunfighter pals?” Kathy asked.
“A gunfighting urologist,” I told her.
“Sweet,” she said.
The next message came up.
“Chance, this is Karen.” There was a long pause. “We still need to talk.” Another long pause ensued. “Call me.” The message ended.
“Sounds like Karen wants to converse,” Kathy said, exhaling smoke.
“She’s going to be disappointed.”
“Girlfriend?”
“I had hopes. Didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
“She got to know me. It rattled her.”
“Saw something she didn’t like?” Kathy asked.
“Apparently.”
Kathy sat up, drained her bourbon, and took a long drag on her smoke before tamping it out in the ashtray.
“Your pal the pimp-cop wasn’t lying. There was exactly one-hundred, twenty-one thousand in the first bag.”
“The second bag?”
“Ninety-six thousand, six-hundred. For a total of two-hundred, seventeen thousand, six-hundred dollars.” Kathy had the money laid out in orderly stacks of twenties which were divided into thousand-dollar increments.
I reached into my jacket pocket and withdrew a large wad of cash. It was the remainder of the ninety-four hundred dollars I’d taken off Drop-Dead Bullock, minus the five thousand I’d already paid Kathy, plus the thirty-seven hundred dollars I’d taken off Quintana’s body. I counted out five thousand dolla
rs and handed it to Kathy.
“Five up front, and five to close the deal,” I said. “Paid in full.”
“What about the rest of the money?” she asked.
“What about it? We agreed your fee was ten grand. That’s a solid payday for one night’s work.”
“Aren’t I entitled to a bonus?”
I looked into her brown eyes and waited a long minute before answering.
“Sure,” I finally grinned. “Cut it in half. But you have to earn it.”
Kathy’s eyes narrowed. “What do I have to do to earn it?”
“Hispanic kid named Efren Campos is going to be hanging out at the Yucatan club in San Leandro this Sunday night,” I said. “He’ll be celebrating his release from Santa Rita.”
I tossed the bindle of drugs from the bag of money Quintana gave me on the table in front of Kathy; the lethal hotshot he’d intended for Belicia Hernandez.
“Why don’t you get to know him?” I asked her.
“Buy him a drink, maybe?” she said, looking at the bindle.
“Bingo,” I said.
“That’s all I have to do to earn a hundred grand?” she asked.
“That’s all.”
“Consider it done,” she said. She pocketed the bindle.
“I will.”
Kathy’s eyes relaxed, and a smile started at one corner of her mouth. She slapped her thigh. “Pour me another whiskey, Chauncey Means. You’re my kind of stupid.” She started dividing the money. I refilled her glass.
After she had separated the money into two even stacks, Kathy grabbed one of the piles of cash and jammed it into her coat pocket. She removed the latex gloves and stood up. Then she held her glass aloft.
“Here’s to pimps,” she said. “The dead ones pay best.”
I tapped her glass with my Mirror Pond bottle. We both drank. I sipped, she slammed. When finished, she set her empty glass on the table next to my shotgun.
“C’mon,” she said, shrugging out of her shoulder holster. “I’m tired. Let’s get to bed.”
After her shoulder holster, Kathy pulled her shirt over her head. She was wearing nothing underneath but dog tags. She bent over and began unlacing her boots. Her abdominal muscles rippled. Once her boots were kicked off she wriggled out of her jeans. She had a spectacular wriggle.
I watched her. I was focusing all my energy on keeping my jaw in place.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked, as the last of her clothes fell away.
“I thought-”
“You thought I played for the other team?” she laughed. “Sometimes I do, when the gal’s hot enough and the mood strikes me. But I like big country boys, too.”
I gulped.
“You going to show me the where the bedroom is, or stand there drooling?”
I can’t remember when I was asked an easier question. I guzzled down the last of my beer and showed her the bedroom.
As tired as we both were, we didn’t sleep much that night. Despite her hard-boiled veneer, Kathy was surprisingly gentle.
The first time around, anyway.
Chapter 34
“Hello Matt,” I said.
“Chance? What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
I approached Matt Nguyen as he was walking a strikingly-attractive Chinese woman to his car. His City-of-Oakland police sedan was parked in the rear of an Asian market located near 8th Avenue and Webster Street, in the heart of Oakland’s Chinatown. By day, the market was swarmed with throngs of shoppers seeking fresh seafood, meat, and vegetables. By night however, the market hosted illegal gambling in the lofts upstairs. It was well after midnight on a Thursday morning.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” I asked him.
“Sue,” Matt said nervously. “This is my friend Chance.”
Sue was in her early twenties and I couldn’t tell if she was on the inside of her minuscule dress trying to get out, or on the outside trying to get in. She’d had a few drinks, and teetered on her two-inch heels.
“Nishe to meet you, Chanche,” she slurred.
“Take a walk, Suzy,” I said.
“Huh?” Sue said.
“Chance, you can’t-”
I cut Matt off in mid-sentence with as hard an uppercut as I’ve ever thrown. I pivoted on my right toe and brought the punch up from the floor, giving it everything I had. The blow landed in the center of his stomach. Matt is considerably smaller than me, despite our similar weight, and the blow lifted him off his feet. When he came down his legs wouldn’t support him. He folded to the ground, both hands clasped against his soft gut.
Sue looked like she was going to scream. I held up my fist and she stifled it. I’m not sure if she noticed I was wearing latex gloves.
“You heard me Suzy; take a walk,” I said again. This time she listened. She ‘clip-clopped’ away as fast as her platform shoes would let her.
Matt lay convulsively gasping. I reached down and pulled his Glock 23 from the scabbard on his belt. He didn’t, or couldn’t, resist. Then I grabbed his left foot and lifted the trouser leg, removing the baby Glock 27 from its resting place in an ankle holster.
“What…the…fuck?” Matt sputtered.
I knelt down beside him. “It would appear you’re back in the good graces of the Tongs,” I said. “Apparently back in Sue’s favor as well. Paid off your debts, did you?”
Matt looked up at me, waiting for his breath to return.
I went on. “I’m surprised to find you out enjoying a recreational evening with such a big caseload, Sergeant. Heard there were three Oakland cops murdered within the past week? That’s got to be putting a lot of pressure on the homicide detectives in Major Crimes Section One.”
“What’s gotten into you, Chance?” He twisted himself to a sitting position and leaned his back against his car for support. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you putting the squeeze on Alvero Quintana for the seventy grand you owed. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“You’re out of your mind, Chance. Cut the bullshit. Give me back my guns.”
“I don’t think so, friend,” I said.
“What are you saying?” Matt asked. “That I stole money from another cop?”
“No. I’m saying you extorted money from a pimp. A pimp who happened to be a cop.”
“You’re fucking crazy.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
“Why would Quintana pay me seventy grand?”
“Because you were assigned to the Marisol Hernandez murder. You knew Quintana shot her with his service pistol. You knew a NIBIN search on the bullet recovered in Marisol’s body would match his departmentally-issued gun. As lead detective assigned to the case you were the only person who could sign out the evidence, switch the bullet, and replace it with another expended forty caliber slug.” I poked him in the forehead with the barrel of one of his own guns for emphasis. “Just like you did for the Tongs.”
“That’s a goddamned fairy tale,” Matt said. But his eyes were scared. He’d noticed the latex gloves.
“I’m going to do you a favor, Detective Sergeant Nguyen,” I said, standing up. “I’ll solve six of your open homicide cases for you right now. That ought to ease your caseload.”
“Chance,” he began.
“Two stiffs full of nine millimeter holes in a crashed Nissan off Lake Chabot Road? I did them. Case solved.”
“Please, Chance,” Matt said.
“Pimp named Bullock, and a cop named Bolson, aired out in a house up in the Oakland Hills? I did them. Another case solved.”
“Chance, please,” Matt repeated. He was beginning to cry.
“Sergeant Alvero Quintana, and a cop whose name I don’t know, gunned down on the runway at Alameda Point? I did them, too. Solved again.”
“Please,” Matt bawled, looking up at me. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Aren’t you going to t
hank me for solving all your open homicides for you? Hell, Matt, three of them were cop killings? You’ll be a hero.”
“Please,” was all Matt could say. He hung his head. Tears and snot flowed freely down his chin.
“The only reason for Quintana to be out on the Track on his night off, waiting to pull me over, was if he’d been tipped off. You were the one person who knew I was going there. I told you myself, earlier in the day, when we talked on the phone.” I pointed one of Matt’s Glock pistols at his head. “You set me up.”
“I didn’t want it to go that far,” he sobbed. “I tried to warn you off.”
“Setting me up isn’t the worst part; by covering for Quintana’s murder of Marisol Hernandez, you as good as pulled the trigger yourself. And on top of that, you profited by it.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt blubbered. “Things got out-of-hand, Chance. I didn’t think you’d get hurt. I swear it. I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you are. You are the sorriest motherfucker alive.” I placed my finger on the trigger. “But not for long. Marisol Hernandez sends her regards.”
I squeezed the trigger twice. Then I dropped both of Matt’s guns on his lifeless body and walked away.
My car was parked a couple of blocks over, beneath the Nimitz Freeway overpass on Webster Street. I took my time reaching it, making sure I wasn’t followed.
I climbed into my car and headed home. I was bone-tired. It had been one helluva week. I needed rest.
I hoped Marisol Hernandez could rest now, too.
The End.
Acknowledgments
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals for their invaluable support in the writing of this novel:
My good friend, and relentless agent, Scott Miller, of Trident Media Group. A true friend who always fights the good fight. Nicole Robson, Emily Ross, Alicia Granstein, and Caitlin O’Beirne of Trident Media Group’s Digital Media and Publishing. Their skill and patience are greatly appreciated.
Legendary California Police Defensive Tactics Instructor Don Cameron; for keeping me, and a lot of other cops, alive. Lieutenant Kevin Wiley of the Oakland Police Department; for technical support. Inspector Ron Miller of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office; for his long-time support. The ‘real’ Calaveras Crew; Canadian Todd, Russ the Gunfighting Urologist, Lothar the Merciless, Chris the Stallion, also known as Vergon, Emperor of the Dragons, (17th Level Ninja of Tongular Flippage), Barry the Duke, Ed, Eric and Frank Brownell. Sidehackers all, and men to ride the river with.
