Pederson stopped a short distance past the jail complex on the opposite side of Orient Road. The address Whelan had given him was a building long past its prime, if it had ever had one. The building was low and flat-roofed. The parking lot had more potholes than pavement. The door, and the two windows that flanked it, appeared not to have been washed in years. They all were reinforced on the inside with steel bars like buildings in a high crime neighborhood. Whelan noted the irony with a jail as a neighbor.
The words “Bail Bonds” had been painted on one window. There was a phone number painted on the other. Both were badly faded. Pederson asked Whelan if he wanted him to wait. He shook his head and said, “I have your cell phone number if I need something locally.” He turned and walked across the shabby parking lot, pulling his thin leather gloves on as he walked.
When he opened the door, a buzzer sounded somewhere in the back. Two rows of battered metal desks ran along the walls from near the front door back about twenty-five feet to a scarred and battered partition. A doorless opening in the partition indicated more space beyond. The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in awhile, and hadn’t been painted in a really long while.
A beefy man with a shaved head was sitting at the last desk on Whelan’s right. He was wearing a tee shirt that said Gold’s Gym and appeared to be working a crossword puzzle in a newspaper. After several moments, and without looking up, he said, “Whaddya want?”
Whelan didn’t answer right away. Instead, he began walking toward the man at the desk.
The man looked up, pushed the paper away, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his thick arms in front of him. The skin below the sleeves of his tee shirt was covered with tattoos. He cocked his head back and narrowed his eyes. He sized Whelan up – the moustache, the glasses, the suit, and the briefcase. His conclusion was clear: another pussy lawyer. “I asked you a question, bud,” he said.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Yeah? Whaddo I look like, a fuckin’ information service?” As Whelan reached his desk, the beefy man stood. He was about five feet nine, but well over two hundred pounds and muscular. Bail bonding could get rough on occasion. It was not for the timid or frail.
“I’m looking for an employee of yours, Arne Olaffsen,” Whelan said. According to Levell, it was the alias Larsen currently used.
“Whadda ya want with Arne?”
“He’s an old army buddy.”
“Yeah? He never told me nothin’ ‘bout no army. Besides he ain’t here and I ain’t got time to fuck around jawing with nonpaying customers. Now get out.” He jerked his head toward the front door.
“Somebody needs a lesson in good manners,” Whelan said.
“Somebody’s gonna give you a lesson in ass-kickin’, you ain’t out of here in ten seconds.”
Whelan saw two options. Wait outside until Larsen showed up or beat the information out of the bondsman. It was an easy choice.
He knew that the other man, despite his bulk, would be quick as well as strong. He would try to use his low center of gravity to bulldoze an opponent. But Whelan wasn’t planning to grapple with the man. He had a different approach in mind.
“I’ll wait here until Olaffsen comes back.”
The bondsman cocked his shaved head to one side and peeled his lips back, expanding his sneer. “You’ll wait your ass outside,” he said and reached suddenly for Whelan’s suit lapel with his left hand while drawing back his right fist.
Whelan responded with an unnatural quickness. In a single, smooth motion, he dropped the briefcase and drove his right arm up, bent ninety degrees at the elbow and his wrist rotating outward. With his two hundred twenty-five pounds behind it, his forearm slammed into the bondsman’s left wrist as it clamped on his lapel. It sent the man’s arm flying to the side. Then Whelan snapped the same forearm, wrist rotating back to the inside, into the bondsman’s right arm as he tried to deliver the punch to Whelan’s head. The man grunted in pain with each blow.
Without pause, Whelan snapped a back-fist strike to the bridge of the man’s nose, crushing it. The bondsman staggered back a full step, but Whelan moved with him, driving a knee into the man’s groin. His knees buckled and Whelan swept his legs out from under him.
The man fell heavily to the floor and tried to get back to his feet. Whelan kicked him flush in the face. The force of the blow split open the skin above his right eye. Blood began to flow freely down his face. He fell again to his hands and knees. Whelan stepped behind him and kicked him hard in the groin again. The bondsman collapsed to the floor and vomited.
Whelan waited patiently for him to recover enough to try to regain his feet, then grabbed him under the right arm and easily hoisted him up. The man staggered and tried to throw a wobbly punch at Whelan. But he only had the use of one eye and his depth perception was off. Because of his injuries, so were his speed and timing. Effortlessly, Whelan threw the man against a wall face-first, twisting his arm up behind his back. He kept forcing it up until he heard the unmistakable snapping sound of the arm dislocating from the shoulder.
The man screamed and collapsed again. As he slid semiconsciously down the wall, his injured eye left a smeared and bloody trail. Whelan picked up his briefcase and walked around behind the man’s desk. He laid the briefcase on the desktop and opened it. He knew the bondsman was right-handed because he had led with his left hand. He opened the top drawer on the right-hand side. Not unexpectedly, it contained a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson Bodyguard .38. With a gloved hand, he lifted it out of the drawer and dropped it into his briefcase, and closed it.
He returned to the bondsman, who was in the fetal position on the floor, his right arm twisted at an odd angle. The man was moaning loudly through clenched teeth. Whelan eased him to his feet. “Tell me where I can find Arne,” he said.
“Lunch, he’s at lunch,” the man said without unclenching his jaw.
“Where does he go for lunch?”
“Earl’s Place.”
“Where’s that?”
The man drew in a deep breath and let out a long, slow groan. He was very pale and beginning to shake as shock set in. Whelan slapped him on the damaged shoulder to get him to focus. “Ow, Jesus, ow! It’s down the street, two blocks.” He motioned with his head, indicating a right turn on exiting the building.
“Where’s your car?” Whelan said.
“You gonna steal my ride?” The man was whining now. “You gonna kill me? Please don’t kill me. I gotta wife and kid.”
“A family? I bet you’re the kind of guy who slaps his wife around, and probably the child too.”
“Only when they need it.” He was shaking badly and there were tears in his one good eye. “Please don’t kill me, please.” He began to sob.
“Give me your car keys,” Whelan said.
The man said, “They’re hangin’ on a hook by the back door.”
Whelan turned him around toward the rear of the building and pushed him, not hard, but not gently. He left the briefcase on the desk and together the two of them walked to the back door of the building. Whelan grabbed the key ring off the hook by the back door. He nudged the man aside, carefully unlocked and opened the door, and looked around. There was an old Cadillac sedan parked outside the door, but no one in sight.
Whelan pushed the bondsman out the door, toward the rear of the Cadillac.
“Whaddya gonna do to me, Mister? Please don’t kill me. I won’t tell no one about this. I swear. I only got a little bit of cash inside, but you can have it.”
“I’m not interested in your money. It’s Olaffsen I’m looking for.”
“Jesus, you’re just like that sonofabitch. Whaddya gonna do to him, kill him?”
“None of your business,” Whelan said as he unlocked and opened the Caddy’s trunk. It was filthy. There were greasy rags and clothes, a nearly bald spare tire, and assorted tools.
He looked quickly around again to be certain no one was watching. Grabbing the bondsman’s good shoulder, he turn
ed him around so the trunk was behind him and the backs of his legs were against the bumper. “Get in the trunk,” he said. “And if I was you, I’d try to land on my left shoulder.”
The bondsman turned and looked at the trunk with his good eye. The right eye was swollen completely shut. He hitched his butt up on the edge of the trunk and toppled over to his left. It didn’t go so well. He lost his balance and turned in midair, landing face first. His right shoulder hit the rim of the tire. He screamed.
“You want to live, do exactly as I tell you,” Whelan said. “I’m going to be around for a while. If I hear any noise, anything at all, I’m going to pop the trunk and kill you nice and slow.” With that, he slammed the trunk lid closed.
He walked back through the bonding office and out the front door, picking up the brief case on the way. Outside he turned right and walked down the street toward Earl’s Place.
18 Tampa, Florida
Although it was Florida and the sun was shining, it wasn’t a Chamber of Commerce day. A cold front had moved in a day earlier and the January weather was raw and windy. The sky was a cloudless, cobalt blue. The temperature was dropping and the day held the promise of a frosty, damp, mean evening. Whelan put on his sunglasses as he left the bondsman’s office and walked the two dusty, forlorn blocks to Earl’s Place.
The parking lot looked like a replica of the Bondsman’s. The only vehicles in the lot were an old Harley with a torn and taped leather saddle, a battered, dirt covered pickup truck that had seen a lot more than the proverbial forty miles of bad road, and an ancient, badly rusted Chevy Nova, its trunk held down by two frayed bungee cords. A rusty and dented pole that once may have been painted white was planted in the middle of the parking lot. The dents and scars near its base testified to the countless number of times drunks had backed into it. The pole supported a neon sign identifying the establishment as Earl’s Place. The neon tubes were broken in several places and Whelan wondered what it really spelled out at night. Hanging beneath the neon sign on two short chains was a rectangular piece of flat rusted metal. “Beer & Eats” had been painted on it a long, long time ago. The rusty chains screeched in complaint as the gusts of cold north wind bullied the sign back and forth.
The building was squarish with a flat roof. The walls were badly in need of paint. An ancient and bent TV antenna was attached to a sidewall and swayed slowly in the wind. There were no windows along the front of the building, just a large, heavy-looking door. Whelan took his sunglasses off and put them in an inside breast pocket of his suit coat. He eased the door open and stepped into the dark interior, moving two steps quickly to his left along the wall, waiting for his vision to adjust to the change from bright sunlight. As it did, he scanned the interior. The U-shaped bar dominated the room. Its closed end was against the wall opposite the door, flanked by the entrances to the men’s and women’s restrooms and an old jukebox. There was a row of booths along the wall to his right and several tables and chairs between them and the bar. Three pool tables and a few more tables with chairs were to the left of the bar. The air inside the bar was overly warm and rank smelling with stale beer, accumulated body odors, and long banished tobacco smoke.
The walls were undecorated and the floor was bare concrete, dirty and cracked. Two middle-aged men dressed in work clothes with county logos on their shirts sat in one of the booths on the right. Probably grounds keepers or custodial workers at the jail, Whelan thought. A younger man in a worn leather jacket and a bandana was shooting pool by himself. He assumed it was the motorcycle rider. A young woman was working the bar.
The only other occupant that Whelan could see was a man with a shaved head sitting at the bar with his back to the door. Even in the warm bar, the man was wearing thin leather gloves very much like Whelan’s. They were thick enough to prevent the leaving of fingerprints, but thin enough to allow unrestricted use of the hands. Whelan connected the dots. Trouble was close.
The man was watching Whelan in the large mirror that ran across the wall behind the bar. The man was massively built with trapezius and deltoid muscles so thick it appeared his shoulders joined his head at the base of his ears. It was Sven Larsen, The Man With No Neck.
A broad smile spread across Whelan’s face. He walked to the bar and stood next to Larsen. Quietly, so that no one else could hear, he said, “Bad haircut.”
Larsen turned. There was a faint but familiar smile on his face. He only had two smiles, a good one and a sinister one. This was his good smile. “Think of the money I save,” he said, as he slid off his stool. The two men embraced.
“It’s been a long time,” Larsen said. “Despite the Halloween costume, you still look like you’re in good shape.”
“I try,” Whelan said. “And you still don’t have a neck.”
“Us good-looking ones never do.” Again there was the faint smile. “I got a call from Levell saying to expect you.”
“He tell you why?”
“No, he said you’d fill me in when you got here.” Larsen sat down and nodded at the stool next to him. “Levell knew about the bonding office, but how did you find me here at Earl’s?”
“The bondsman told where to find you.”
Larsen arched one eyebrow. “Did he survive?”
“Mostly.”
Larsen grunted. It was as close to a belly laugh as he ever got. “You haven’t lost your skill sets. Ross, the bondsman, is a tough sonofabitch, though not as tough as he’d like to think he is.”
“So, you’ve been bonding for the past twenty years?”
“Not exactly. I got the license, but I’m a specialist of sorts.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” Whelan said.
Larsen took a sip of beer from the bottle in front of him. He held it in that odd, almost dainty way that truly powerful men sometimes do. Whelan wondered if it was because they feared a normal grip might shatter the bottle. The Larsen he remembered had never been much of a drinker. He took the beer to be a further sign that trouble was brewing.
“There are some people who scare even bondsmen,” Larsen said. “When one of those types skips bail, I get the call to bring them back.” He paused and smiled his bad smile, the cold, mirthless, menacing one. “I always get the sonofabitch.”
“Maybe you should have been a Mountie.”
“Naw, too freaking cold in Canada and the money is nowhere near as good.”
“Kill anybody in the process of dragging them back?”
“Not yet, but I keep hoping. It’s interesting that you asked. One of the things I like about the job is the fact that when a person skips bail, the law says the bondsman must ‘produce the body,’” he emphasized the last three words. “Doesn’t say there has to be any life in the body.” Again, the mirthless smile flickered across his face.
“Sounds like you’ve found your life’s work,” Whelan said.
Larsen motioned to the bartender. Although she didn’t seem to have anything else to do, she took her time coming over. When she did, Whelan saw that one eyelid was swollen and discolored. Her bottom lip was puffy, accentuating a natural pout. There were cuts on her nose and right cheek and bruises on several other parts of her face and neck. Her sleeveless top revealed more ugly black, blue, and yellow bruises on her arms. There was no sign of life in her eyes, just resignation.
“Yeah?” she said. She was young, but her voice sounded tired and cheerless.
Larsen tilted his head at Whelan. “Amber, this is my best buddy. I think he needs a beer.”
Amber didn’t say anything; she just stood in front of Whelan looking down at the bar with a sullen expression. Judging from the place, he knew it would be a waste of time to ask for an import or microbrew. He glanced at the bottle in front of Larsen. It was a well-known American brand. “Still drinking that watered down bat piss.”
“How do you know what bat piss tastes like?”
“I’m Irish. I know a lot of things.”
“Some things I don’t want to know and that’s on
e of them.” Larsen smiled his good smile.
Whelan looked at the girl behind the bar, grimaced and said, “I’ll have what he’s drinking.” She walked away slowly.
“How’s Sharon?” Whelan said.
“Celebrated our twenty-first anniversary last month.”
“Kids?”
“Two boys. Rolf and Erik.”
“Sounds like a couple of Vikings. Do they take after their old man?”
Larsen shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “Now you know about me, where have you been?”
“Ireland. A town called Dingle. It’s on a peninsula in the southwestern part of the island.”
Larsen nodded. “That’s right, you were born there. Still speak the lingo?”
“Sure and begorrah,” Whelan said.
“How do you pay your bills?”
“We—Caitlin and I—run a B and B, a bed and breakfast.”
“So, Caitlin, is it?” Larsen said in a poor attempt to affect a brogue. “And would she be red haired with green eyes and freckles?”
Whelan shook his head and smiled. “Most Irish aren’t redheads or freckled. Caitlin has raven black hair and ice blue eyes. She’s a stunner.”
Amber returned and placed a bottle of beer in front of Whelan. He nodded his appreciation, and she moved away to another part of the bar. He had no intention of drinking it and just left it sitting in front of him., sweating condensation onto the heavily scarred bar top.
“How’d you meet her?”
Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening Page 8
