She’d never really expected Amanda Murdoch to go through with it. For one thing, the kid had a rap sheet more in line with one of Don Vendetta’s thugs than a cop. Assault and battery, disorderly conduct, public drunkenness, and even one charge of prostitution that was dropped—not exactly someone you’d pick out as police material. Yet Murdoch had gone through the academy and had enrolled in the Rampart City Police Department, where she’d done a stint in traffic patrol.
It was Donovan who approved the girl’s request to move on to something more challenging. Donovan knew the kid’s talents were wasted writing tickets and directing traffic after games and concerts. Someone who would throw herself at a gun clearly had the guts to patrol Rampart’s dirty streets.
When Officer Murdoch came towards her, the look of relief on her face made Donovan wonder if the girl would hug her right in front of all these reporters. The poor kid had never been center stage in a media circus before; she had never had dozens of vultures shout questions at her as if she were a movie star. Officer Murdoch held out her hand for Donovan to shake. Maybe she was more media savvy than Donovan had given her credit for.
As Donovan shook the girl’s hand for the cameras, she found something being pressed into her palm. Officer Murdoch gave her a knowing look. Without looking at it, Captain Donovan knew it was a message from their mutual friend the Scarlet Knight. It figured that lunatic would involve a rookie cop in this shit.
Donovan turned to another officer and said, “Get these idiots out of here. And tell them to fuck the First Amendment.” She left the officer to clear out the crowd while Officer Murdoch filled out the reports to book Don Vendetta. The initial charges were enough to make Donovan laugh: loitering and vagrancy. The don would probably pay a hundred dollar fine and go on her way two hours later.
Donovan put a hand on Officer Murdoch’s shoulder. “After you get her into holding, come up and see me.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Then Donovan nodded to the don before she returned to her office. On the elevator ride up she saw Officer Murdoch had given her a flash drive for a computer. It was a tiny fucking thing, so small Donovan feared she might lose it. Even worse, it was too advanced to work on her piece of shit computer. She tried it on a few others in the department before she gave up.
“Problem, Cap?” Lieutenant Cielo asked.
“Find one of those IT jerk-offs and tell them to bring me a laptop. A good one.”
She supposed a laptop would make it harder for the task force to eavesdrop on what the Scarlet Knight wanted to tell her. It probably had something to do with Don Vendetta; it was probably to brag about how she’d finally nailed the criminal Captain Donovan couldn’t put away. As if the don would stay in jail for long.
While she waited, she turned back to the brochures on her desk. She picked up one for a singles community near Dallas. It promised massages by a staff of trained professionals. Captain Donovan closed her eyes and imagined some young Latino named Armando rubbing her shoulders. He said in a husky voice, “You have so much tension down here.” She’d ask him to rub a bit lower; she carried a lot of tension below her waist.
She shook her head and cursed herself for these idle fantasies. These were the desperate, last-gasp fantasies of a middle-aged woman. She was forty-seven years old, and while she liked to think she was well-preserved for that age, it was much too old to dream about Latin hunks rubbing her back. At her age—and with her modest income—she’d be lucky to get a man who still had his own hair and most of his organs.
Cielo knocked on the door, a laptop in his arms. She wondered if he’d stopped to plant a bug on it before he returned it. She’d try to find out but she knew less about computers than she did about tennis. “Here you are, Cap. Taking some work home?”
“Not really.” Cielo hung around for a few seconds, until he must have understood from her glare that she wanted to be left alone. She waited until he’d hurried off like a scolded puppy before she turned on the laptop and inserted the flash drive.
As expected, there was an audio file on the drive. Also as expected, the Scarlet Knight’s voice was on it in that idiotic, female Clint Eastwood growl of hers. “You’ve probably got Don Vendetta in your holding cells now. And you probably think I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.” The Scarlet Knight paused, probably to leave space for Donovan to grumble something. She was too tired to bother. “I’m sure you remember Al Capone from your history classes. Or maybe you watched The Untouchables.”
In fact Donovan had always liked reruns of The Untouchables with Robert Stack as Elliot Ness, busting up speakeasies and throwing mobsters in jail. It had taken young Lottie Donovan about three hours on the police force to know she wouldn’t do any of that. In real life the closest to Elliot Ness she had was a nut in red armor. It didn’t matter, as the real Ness had never actually put Capone away; they’d hauled him in on a tax racket.
The Scarlet Knight’s voice continued, “You should be able to hold on to her for a few hours. That should give you enough time to find Alonzo Jimenez. He’s the one in charge of maintaining her computer networks. He’ll have the information you need to put her away. She’ll call her lawyers and the originals will probably be destroyed, but Jimenez will have copies for insurance. As long as you get him before the don’s goons, everything should work out. You bring him in nice and legal, he gives you the details about her organization, and the Feds can put her away like Capone. Good luck, Captain.”
Donovan stared at the screen for a moment, her body numb. She recognized the name of Alonzo Jimenez. He’d hacked the Pentagon and ended up in Leavenworth. It came as no surprise he’d go to work for Don Vendetta. Could it really be as easy as the Scarlet Knight said? After all these years all they had to do was find a computer hacker and get him to roll on the don?
She heard a knock on her door. She thought it’d be Cielo coming to spy on her but it was Officer Murdoch. Captain Donovan remembered she’d asked the girl to come up to her office after Don Vendetta was booked. Donovan burst out of her chair and grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair. “Come with me, Officer. We’re going to give you a little on-the-job training.”
In the elevator, Donovan wished she had a fedora and trench coat for this. After all these years she would finally have her Elliot Ness moment.
***
They took Murdoch’s personal car, a rusty Oldsmobile that had to be almost as old as the girl herself. Donovan hunkered down in the seat and ignored Murdoch’s questions about why she was doing this. It wasn’t until they were a couple blocks away from the station that she sat up. “Take us to the hot dog stand at Dryden and Hull,” Donovan said.
“If you’re hungry we could have ordered in.”
Donovan smiled at this; the kid had moxie, that was for sure. “We’re not going for hot dogs. We’re going for information. You ever squeezed a snitch before?”
“No. We don’t get many snitches in traffic duty.”
“Then I guess this will be an education for you.” Donovan reached into her pocket. “You mind if I smoke?”
“Yeah, I do mind. My friend’s got really sensitive asthma.”
“Megan Putnam, right? That pale little thing from Rampart State?”
“You have a good memory.”
“It’s kind of hard to forget something like hundreds of people getting blown up while you were investigating a missing person who wasn’t actually missing.”
“You’d have rather been in one of the buildings that got blown up?”
“Just watch the road, will you?” Donovan crossed her arms over her chest and then closed her eyes. It wasn’t that she was bitter about not being on the front lines for the RAT Bombings; she hated that the previous Scarlet Knight had played her like a chump on the Putnam case. Of course if not for that case, she wouldn’t be in the car with Officer Murdoch right now; the kid would probably still be at school or with a real job.
Like most anything still open at three in the morning in Rampart
City, the hot dog stand was really a front for nefarious activity. In the alley behind the hot dog stand was where some of the city’s less scrupulous citizens gambled on dice, boxing, or dog fights. The losers of the latter were probably cooked up into wieners for those stupid enough to eat them.
Captain Donovan sighed with relief that tonight was craps; she’d hate to have to shoot a couple of dogs and then call in animal control. She didn’t bother to reach for her badge as the players already knew her. Most of them were young and spry enough to run off, which left one old man who wore sunglasses despite that it was still nighttime.
“Must be the great Lottie Donovan,” the blind man said.
“So how are the dice treating you, Benny?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I can’t see shit.” Benny didn’t actually participate in any of the gambling going on in the alley, at least not since a shiv made it so he had to wear sunglasses at night five years ago. Now he sat in the alley with a cup of soda to remind himself of the good old days.
“You want to make this quick and painless or long and painful?” she asked. She leaned against the wall beside him.
“For you, I’d rather have it painful.” Benny turned his head towards where Officer Murdoch reclined against another wall. “How about you and your girlfriend give me a little double-dip?”
“How’d you know I was here?” Officer Murdoch asked. “Can he really see me?”
“He can smell you,” Captain Donovan said. “Not many guys going around with lavender conditioner in their hair.”
“Shit. I borrowed it from Megan.”
“So how about it, ladies?” Benny asked.
Captain Donovan reached between the blind man’s legs and clamped down with her hand. “If you still want to have any feeling down there, you’re going to tell us where to find Alonzo Jimenez.”
“Jimmy? Shit, that’s easy. He hangs out over on Burns Street. Apartment over this tattoo parlor. Savage Ink it’s called.” Benny turned to Donovan and smiled. “Now, you going to finish that or what?”
“The last thing I want is your mummified sperm on my hand.” She took her hand away to pat his shoulder. “You guys have fun.”
Back in the car, Officer Murdoch said, “So that’s how you shake down a snitch? You grab him by the balls?”
“They all have their prices. You find it and doors will open.”
“Gee, I’m learning so much already.”
***
The tattoo parlor was closed for the night, but there was a stairway in the back that Donovan managed to open with a credit card and a couple of swift kicks. “Isn’t this illegal entry?” Officer Murdoch asked.
“I like to think we’re concerned citizens. Don’t you smell that smoke?”
“That’s your cigarette.”
“Tell it to the grand jury.” Captain Donovan stepped into a narrow corridor with no lights working. She could hear rats move around—and not the rodent variety.
Without being asked, Officer Murdoch took her flashlight from her belt and shone it in the corridor. A junkie cried out like a vampire. “Hey man, what you doing?” the junkie shouted.
“We’re not men,” Donovan said as she knelt down in front of him. “You seen Alonzo Jimenez tonight?”
“I see lots of things, man.”
She seized him by the front of his shirt. “You call me ‘man’ one more time and I’m going to rip your fucking tongue out. You seen Jimenez or not?”
“He’s upstairs. Second floor. We did the sweetest shit, m—ma’am.”
“Thanks a lot, pal. You’re lucky we got bigger fish to fry.”
They found a rickety stairway that went up to the second floor. There were a half-dozen doors, but only one that was open with a man’s feet sticking out of it. Donovan cursed, as she thought they were too late, that the don’s goons had already taken Jimenez out.
As she got closer, she heard snoring. She found a man facedown on the floor, a needle stuck in his arm. “Christ,” Donovan mumbled as she pulled the needle out. She spun the man over to see that he was a Latino, though his face was too pockmarked and hairy to be the masseuse of her dreams.
She gave him a good shake to wake him up. “Alonzo Jimenez?” she asked.
He mumbled something incoherent, so she shook him again and said his name louder. This time his eyes opened, though they didn’t focus on anything. “What you want?” he said.
“Are you Alonzo Jimenez?”
“Yeah, so? What are you, a cop or something?”
“That’s right. You and me are going to take a trip downtown and you’re going to tell me all about Don Vendetta.”
“Oh shit,” Jimenez said.
They carried him between them back to the car to dump him in the backseat. Officer Murdoch used her handcuffs to chain him to a handle above the passenger’s side door so he couldn’t get out. “Hey man, I got my rights. I want my lawyer,” he said.
“You’ll get your lawyer,” Donovan said. “First we’re going to get you to the station so you can dry out. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me where you keep your copies of Don Vendetta’s ledgers?”
“I ain’t telling you shit, pig.”
Donovan held up the needle, which she’d stuck in a baggie. “We caught you with a needle in your arm. There’s still some heroin left in here. I’m sure if we took a blood test right now it’d be through the roof.”
“That’s like illegal search and seizure,” he said.
“Officer Murdoch, what did I tell you?”
“We were concerned your place was burning down. I mean if you’d left the stove on you could have burned the whole block down.”
“This is bullshit. Fucking pigs.”
Donovan turned to face Jimenez. “Look, Jimmy, you got two choices: you can go back to prison for life on your third strike, or you can give us what you got on the don and kick back in witness protection for a while. New identity, slate totally clean, and everything.”
Jimenez didn’t say anything for a while, but she could tell he was doing the mental calculations, which would probably take a while in his dope-addled state. In the end she hoped he’d come to the conclusion that the risk of possible death testifying against Don Vendetta while he remained free would be preferable to certain death in prison.
The car was starting up the parking ramp when Jimenez sighed and said, “You win. Fucking pigs.”
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Captain Donovan said with what she hoped was a mirror of Don Vendetta’s smug grin. The tables have finally turned, she thought. She thought of the Scarlet Knight and shook her head. The bitch was crazy like a fox. Donovan made a mental note to cancel her appointment with the Anti-Vigilante Task Force tomorrow.
Chapter 6
At five in the morning in the historical district there was nowhere for Emma to buy a shovel. Instead she drove back to Rampart Gardens and coasted along the old paths until she found the caretaker’s shed. There was a padlock on the shed to keep someone from doing exactly what she planned to do. This didn’t prove to be a problem, as she simply had to call for the case of armor with the magic words and then pull out one of the golden gloves. When she touched the glove to the padlock, the lock fell away to open the door.
Inside she found a full assortment of shovels, as well as a backhoe. The latter item would be quicker but much noisier. She opted for one of the shovels, the one that looked the biggest. Then she began to put on the rest of the scarlet armor—all except for the helmet. What she planned to do right now was Emma Earl’s work, not the Scarlet Knight’s.
Marlin showed up as she jammed the shovel into the ground for the first time. The ghost looked to her and then at the ground. “You’ve finally lost it,” he said.
“Don’t bother me. I have to do this.”
“You do realize that grave robbing is a crime, don’t you? The sort of thing the Order frowns upon.”
“I’m not robbing anything. I need a sample.” Emma threw a shovelful of dirt off to th
e side. The augmented strength of the armor made it easy enough for her to plunge the shovel into the ground in front of Louise’s grave—if it was Louise’s grave.
“A sample? Are you planning on putting her on display at the museum?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Now see here. I could understand the sitting at her grave and the talking to her—”
Emma glared at the ghost. “Were you spying on me? Were you listening to what I said to her?”
“No. I only watched from a distance.” The ghost visibly shivered despite that he didn’t have any nerve endings to feel cold. “Graveyards give me the creeps. Too much psychic interference.”
“Then go away. I don’t want you here.”
“Yes, well, I thought I should warn you. If you go mad, the armor might decide to take action against you. From what I’ve seen, you’re pretty close to that point.”
“I don’t care.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I suppose I ought to go fetch the witch to talk some damned sense into you.”
Emma stopped digging. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
She removed part of the armor so she could access her pocket, where she’d put the picture Markova had given her. She held this up for the ghost to see. “It’s her. Louise. At least that’s what Katarina said.”
“Who?”
“The woman who works for Bykov. She came here. While you were off peeping in someone’s bedroom window or whatever you were doing, she told me that one of his people switched Louise with another girl at the hospital so he could kidnap her.”
“Sounds like a bloody soap opera.”
“I know that, but look at her. She looks like the girl I saw in the future, only younger.”
“It could be a trap. All these computers and things they’ve got these days, shouldn’t be too difficult to make up an image.”
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 111
