by Blair Howard
“I don’t think so. There are only… three dead, I think. Gold over there. Her up the catwalk… and him.” I nodded in Jonathan Greene’s direction.
“There are some wounded,” I continued, “and some people tied up all over the building…. Look, Bobby. I don’t want to lose this arm. I need medical attention.”
“They’re coming. Should be here in a couple of minutes. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what the hell happened to him,” the chief said, looking down at Greene.
I looked at Kate; Kate looked at Bob; we all kept our mouths shut.
“Looks like an accident to me,” Jackson said, his face perfectly blank.
“Accident?” Masterson raised an eyebrow. “How the hell can it be an accident? He’s kneeling with his face on the floor and his hands tied behind his back with a cable tie, for Christ’s sake.”
“No he isn’t. He’s over there at the bottom of the stairs. Must have gotten excited, slipped, and… fell?” He screwed up his face quizzically as he said it.
Masterson looked sideways at him, a skeptical look on his face. He was shaking his head, grimly, then his attitude seemed to change. He smiled down at me, then said forcefully, “Yeah, that’s it, an accident. Captain Jackson, you got a minute?” He was talking to Jackson, but he was looking at me. “Just a couple of minutes,” he continued. “You and I, we need to go get the boys organized. We need to begin clearing the building, and getting the paramedics in here. You folks hang tight,” he told us. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t move anything. Help will be here in a minute.”
He took hold of Jackson’s arm, turned him around, and steered him toward the shadows.
Once they’d disappeared, Bob took a quick step forward, grabbed the lifeless Greene around the waist, and carried him easily to the foot of the stairs. He dropped him hard on the bottom step. I cringed as the back of his neck hit the edge of the steel tread. He took out a small pocketknife, sliced through the plastic tie, stuffed the tie and the knife back into his pocket, took a step back, stepped forward again and rearranged Greene’s arms, then stepped back again and surveyed his handiwork.
“That should fix it,” he said. “He wasn’t tied long enough, or tight enough, to make ligature marks.” And then he walked quickly back and knelt down beside Kate, who was cutting the cable tie around my arm. He made it with not a moment to spare.
At least a dozen of Cleveland’s finest came boiling in out of the shadows, along with a half dozen paramedics. They were quickly followed by Masterson and Jackson, who were accompanied by a tall man wearing jeans and a golf shirt. I could tell just by his attitude that the third man was the DA.
He questioned me at length while the paramedics readied me for the hospital. He listened skeptically to everything I had to say—I made sure that Kate, Bob, and Jacque did too—and then he turned to Masterson.
“You believe any of that bullshit?” he asked him.
“Yeah, Dell. I believe it. How the hell we would have jerked that mob outa here if not for Starke and his crew, I don’t know. The Greenes had the place battened down tight. No one ever saw Tree. I, for one, am grateful. We all should be.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Here we were, surrounded by bodies and wounded, and they were… grateful. They were taking no action. Yeah right. Been there, done that. There ain’t nothing that easy, and while maybe Bobby could handle the DA, I knew I still had the TBI to cope with.
Ten minutes later I was on the way to the Skyridge hospital emergency room. They hauled me into triage, then straight to the OR. Yep, it was a bad one. I was lucky not to lose my arm. The nine-millimeter full metal jacket slug had ploughed a hole through my arm. The exit wound…. Well, I’d seen a few of those in the past, and I’d been shot before, but this was different. Just to look at it scared the hell out of me, but that wasn’t all. The slug had clipped the bone, carved a notch into it. The good news was I could wiggle all of my fingers and I had feeling in the fingertips, so by some miracle the tendons and nerves were still intact. The bad news: the slug had also severed an artery, and that required a stint. Masterson was right; I wouldn’t be playing golf for quite a while. Still, bad as it was, it wasn’t enough to keep me in the hospital more than two or three hours, just as long as it took to x-ray and repair the wound and the artery, and bandage it. When it was done I discharged myself, much to the dismay of the attending nurses and physicians, called Chief Masterson, and he had a cruiser pick me up. It was just after five in the morning.
Chapter 20
Friday Morning, Early
The next six hours didn’t exactly fly by either. We were kept separate from one another, which was standard practice, and they’d hauled Bob’s Jeep into the compound, collected all of our weapons, and laid them out on the conference room table. There they garnered more than a few admiring looks, especially the suppressed Tavors.
“You went in there to kill, didn’t you Harry?” Masterson said, hefting one of the rifles thoughtfully.
That one I was able to answer honestly. “No, Bobby, I didn’t. I went in there prepared to kill if I had to, but I promised my father that we wouldn’t, not unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Why do you think we carried the ties? You found the prisoners, right?”
He nodded. “That we did. Five of them. And four dead and nine wounded, two of whom are in critical condition. Jesus, Harry. That was a war you guys just fought. You’re lucky you all are still alive, and mostly unhurt. I’m not even going to ask you what happened to that slimy little bastard Greene….”
He was interrupted when the door to conference room opened and two people I knew well walked in: Special Agents Gordon Caster and Sergio Mendez of the Tennessee Bureau Of Investigation. Both of whom I’d had dealings with only a few months earlier.
“I knew it,” Caster said, dropping down into one of plush seats on the other side of the big table. “Sooner or later, I knew we’d run into you again. How’s Kate, by the way?”
I grinned at him. “She’s fine. She’s downstairs somewhere. I’m sure you’ll get to see her.”
“Oh yeah, you can be sure of that.”
“Were you in on this raid, Chief?” Caster asked.
Bobby didn’t hesitate. “We were.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What about Gazzara? Why was a Chattanooga PD homicide detective involved?”
Oh hell, here we go, I thought. Now the crap will hit the fan.
But I was wrong. Chief Bobby must have been in touch with Chief Johnston in Chattanooga, because what he said next just about bowled me over.
“It was a mutual aid operation. We’ve had the Greenes under observation for more than three months. Since they were operating out of Chattanooga I asked Chief Johnston for aid. Lieutenant Gazzara was detached and placed on loan to us. Johnston also recommended we involve Mr. Starke. Apparently he knows the Greene’s and Lester Tree quite well, is that not so, Mr. Starke?”
Caster grinned at him. I could tell it was all he could do not to burst out laughing.
“Bobby,” he said. “You are so full of crap you could fertilize a half dozen acres of corn. You think you’re fooling anyone? I know exactly what happed here, and so do you. Starke here found out that Tree murdered his brother and he came after him. It’s that simple.”
Masterson stared stoically at him, his mouth clamped shut, his lips flat.
“No comment, Bobby? Can’t say as I blame you, but no worries, Golden Boy here gets another free pass. We did, after all, get a lot of bad guys off the streets, not to mention the haul. That being said, Harry, we still have a few details to clear up before you and your army of three can be on your way home.”
And so it went on. It was tough, but for the most part they were respectful, and by the time they were done I knew that Bobby Masterson had not been joking when he’d thanked me earlier, back at the Old Woolen Mill.
The Cleveland PD, the District Attorney, and of course the TBI would take credit for the raid, for shutti
ng down the drug ring, and for the bust, and it was a big one. They found seventeen hundred pounds of marijuana packed in one-pound packages, twenty kilos of high-grade coke ready to cut, and they were still counting the pills when we left at eleven thirty that morning. Oh, and then of course there was the $447,000 in cash. Yep, it was a big bust.
My team’s part in it would, for a change, be kept quiet. No media, no hassle, and best of all, no charges. And… no guns. They kept the whole damned lot, including the vests.
Kate, Chief Johnston, and the Chattanooga PD, however, would get the recognition and credit they deserved for their part in the mutual aid operation.
So all in all, everyone was happy except me. Shady Tree was still missing.
When we finally got out of there it was close to lunchtime, and I was starving. Not only that, my arm was throbbing with pain like I’d never known. I’d been given some painkillers, Percocet, at the hospital, but they weren’t for me; I needed some Ibuprofen, something to drink, and some food—in that order.
I’d called Amanda almost as soon as I got out of the hospital. No, I didn’t tell her any of what had happened. I was in no mood, and I sure as hell didn’t tell her about my wound. She did, however, agree to come and get us—Bob’s Jeep was still in the compound, and was likely to stay there for a while, and she was waiting for us in the Cleveland PD lobby when they finally turned us loose. As always, she looked amazing, and it was only then that I realized what a sorry-looking bunch we must have been.
Be that as it may, she took one look at me and she flipped out. It took me a good five minutes to reassure her that I was all right, that the wound to my arm, though easily the worst I’d ever received, would heal and that I would eventually regain full use of it.
She didn’t like that word “eventually,” and, to be truthful, neither did I, but that’s what the surgeon who patched me up said, so I had to believe it.
During the ride back home—yes, all of us got to leave then, including Jacque—Amanda was quiet. I asked her what was wrong, several times, but all she would say was, “Nothing, Harry.”
Chapter 21
Friday Afternoon
We arrived at the house to find August and Rose waiting for us. We climbed out of the car, and Rose took one look at my arm in its sling and did that that thing Macaulay Culkin did in Home Alone. Then she grabbed me, flung her arms around my neck, and squeezed. I was quite touched.
My old man? He just stood by, shaking his head until Rose let me loose.
“You okay, son?” he asked.
Before I could answer, Amanda turned and walked quickly into the house. She said not a word, nor did she look back; she simply disappeared.
Jeez, what the hell’s up with her?
I spent the next five minutes giving August and Rose the short version—the details I saved for later—and then I went looking for her. I found her in the bedroom, flat on her face, on the bed. I thought she was crying; she wasn’t; she was as mad as hell.
I went and sat down beside her, put my hand on her shoulder. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
She shrugged away my hand, rolled over, and then sat up. Boy was she angry.
“Damn you, Harry Starke. How can you ask such a stupid question? What the hell d’you think is wrong? Look at you. You look like hell, and so do the others, but at least they all managed to come back in one piece, but not you, oh hell no. Every time you walk out of here you come back banged up all to hell.”
“Honey, that’s not—”
“Harry, shut your mouth for once and let me speak. You’re lucky you didn’t lose your arm. And this!” She grabbed the sleeve of my T-shirt and jerked it up over my shoulder, revealing the ugly black bruise where Kathryn Greene’s bullet had slammed into my body armor. “How many more times were you hit?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but she interrupted me.
“No, show me! Show me your back. Now!”
Reluctantly, I let her pull the T-shirt over my head, and I heard her sharp intake of breath when she saw it.
“Oh my God. I knew it. You couldn’t sit still in the car. You had to lean forward the whole way home. Have you seen it?”
I shook my head.
“Go look at it. Go on.”
I shrugged and went to the bathroom, the T-shirt hanging over the sling.
It did look pretty bad, but they were only bruises, and I’d seen worse. They’d actually look a whole lot worse later on. I went back to her. I was smiling, but then I saw the look on her face. It was… well, you had to see it.
“C’mere,” she said quietly. “Sit down.” She had a pot of Blue Emu in her hand.
She spent the next five minutes rubbing the stuff into my bruises. She didn’t say a word to me the whole time. Finally, she screwed the top on the pot, put it down on the nightstand, and lay back on the pillows, staring up at me.
“Thank you,” I said, and leaned over her, intending to kiss her. She put both hands flat on my chest and pushed me away.
“Hey!” I said.
“That’s not going to get it, Harry. A kiss is not good enough. You seem to think that will fix anything—not anymore. But it’s not even that. You and me… we can’t go on like this. One of these days you’re going to come home in a box…. No. Stop it! Get away from me.” Again she pushed me away.
“I mean it, Harry. You’ll be forty-six next year and you’re still acting and thinking like Wild Bill Hickok, and it’s going to get you killed.”
“She’s right, Harry.”
I looked up. My father was standing in the open doorway.
“She’s right,” he repeated. “Listen to her.” And then he turned and walked away. I got up and closed the door after him.
“So what are you saying?” I asked, sitting back down beside her.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. I know you, Harry. I know what you are, and I know you can’t change, so….”
“Wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying? You want to call off the wedding?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. But I do want you to stop acting like—like one of the damned X-men. For God’s sake, Harry, we have a police force to do what you do. You don’t have to take the risks you do. Let them do it. It’s what they get paid for.”
“You want me to quit my work, what I do for a living?” I asked quietly.
“I want you to stop taking unnecessary risks! I don’t want to wake up one morning and find you gone forever!”
“Okay,” I said. “You got it.”
She looked at me, wide-eyed. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
I could tell she didn’t believe me for a second—but then she did. “Oh, Harry.” She flung her arms around my neck and squeezed.
Yep, I said it and, at the time, I meant it. It wasn’t long after, though, that I realized it wasn’t something I should have said. I never go looking for this stuff; it comes looking for me. Still, I’d made her a promise and I was going to do my best to keep it. I didn’t want to lose her either.
Chapter 22
Friday Evening
Jacque gathered her belongings and went home to Wendy. Kate and Bob did the same. Well, they went off together. That left me and Amanda with Rose and August.
The weather had turned, the sun was shining, and all was right with the world. I called Dinner Delivered—no one wanted to cook, least of all me—and ordered for delivery around seven o’clock, and by three that afternoon we were out by the pool. August and Rose and I were seated at a table under an umbrella with a Yeti cooler full of ice, gin, Laphroaig, and several bottles of white wine. We watched Amanda swimming laps: long, slow strokes that propelled her through the water like a miniature torpedo.
Finally she climbed the steps out of the water, grabbed a towel, and proceeded to dry her hair. She was wearing a white bikini, her body glistening in the sunshine, the drops of water sparkl
ing as they ran down her belly. Damn, she’s beautiful.
Eventually the show was over, and she joined us at the table. She noted that my glass was empty, and, knowing I couldn’t do it myself—the arm had stiffened drastically and I could barely move it—she poured me a fresh drink, leaned over and kissed me, and then poured a glass of wine for herself.
The view from the patio that afternoon and evening was stunning. By eight o’clock it was twilight, and the lights of the city had turned it into a glittering net of jewels.
Me? I was in a somewhat pensive mood, thinking about my life, my family, my friends, and my brother, Henry. And I daydreamed. It was one of those rare moments when I was truly at peace with myself and the world.
“Harry. Wake up.” It was August that jerked me out of my reverie.
I turned and smiled at him. “Hey.”
“Well, are you going to tell us?” he asked.
I didn’t want to, but I did. I told them the whole story, from parking Bob’s Jeep under the tree to calling Amanda to come and fetch us, and the three of them listened in silence until I’d finished. The only thing I left out was Bob breaking Greene’s neck. I didn’t tell them how he died, just that he had. And I wondered if I’d pay for that omission one day, and for the deaths of Henry Gold and Kathryn Greene. Tree was out there somewhere, and like a bad penny he was sure to turn up again. And then there was the congressman. He would never forgive me for killing his daughter.
I shook the thoughts out of my head. And I surely didn’t mention them to Amanda and my father.
“I kept my word, Dad. I tried my best not to kill, but….”
He nodded slowly, his eyes on mine. “I know you did, son…. So Tree got away?”
“He did. He was the only one. They got everyone else.”
“Is he the one who killed Henry?”
“He was responsible, but no, he didn’t kill him. That was Duvon James. He won’t be charged, though. Other than what Tree said, there’s no proof, no evidence.”
August shook his head sadly. Rose put a hand on his arm.
