by Dylan Rust
“I’m just curious,” Jeremiah said. “We sent Diego and Sanchez after the keycard and they’re my homies. Big Tony here says that you caught them playing with each other.”
“You could say that,” Jack said.
“Well, you could say a lot of things,” Jeremiah said. “And I can say a lot of things too. But that’s the problem with saying things. It don’t amount to much.”
“What are you getting at?” Jack said.
“You’re not an inmate in Building Three,” Jeremiah said. “Your face… there was something about your face.”
Big Tony joined in. The slow moving electrical pulses in his thick, meaty brain was beginning to put together who Jack was. “You know what? I’m thinking the same thing. This asshole, this guy, he looks just like that… ugh…”
Big Tony dropped to the ground.
Jack pulled back the combat knife.
“Tony!? Tony!?” Jeremiah said.
Jack swung the glass breaking tip of the knife into the Jeremiah’s skull. He felt the crack of his frontal bone. Bits and pieces of bone would be lodging themsleves into the fat of his brain, causing catastrophic internal damage. But it wouldn’t kill him. Not yet, at least.
Jeremiah couldn’t see a thing. He swung left and right, ignoring the pain from the knife’s handle.
The darkness and tight space made it difficult to dodge the big man’s arms. Jack took a hit. His body flew into the brick wall of the sewer. He landed on the ground and shot back up.
Jeremiah came for him.
Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on the splashes of muddy water Jeremiah’s feet made. It was too dark to trust his vision. He heard a swoosh and rolled to his left. Two big fists crashed down toward where he was.
Jack stood up and hit Jeremiah in his temporal bone with the handle of the knife. Again, he felt the the skull shatter. For good measure, he hit Jeremiah one more time with the handle. This time on the parietal skull bone. The poor bastard’s skull was a cracked like a broken plate.
Jeremiah fell to the ground.
Jack made his way to end of the sewer.
It was time to pay his old buddy Gunner a visit.
64
They’d already left the sewer.
Jack climbed up after them.
He made it to the top. He was back in 2B. On the ground floor. Far from the admin desks, and anyone who would recognize him from earlier.
There was a trail of green, muddy shit on the floor. Jack followed it. It had to be from the inmates. It led to an elevator.
He got inside and pressed the down button. He made his way down to solitary. Three floors down. Thirty feet below the surface. Close to hell. He knew that was where they would be headed.
The elevator door dinged. Jack walked out.
He could hear them.
“Where the fuck is Diego? Where’s Jeremiah? Big Tony? For fucks sake!” It was Gunner. He was berating one of his pawns. “We need that keycard or we can’t get into the solitary cells.”
“I’ve got it,” Jack said.
“Who the fuck is that?” Gunner said.
Jack was in the shadows. Out of view. He tossed them the card. It slid on the ground. Gunner picked it up.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Jack didn’t respond.
Gunner looked left and right. He signalled to two of his men to investigate. They walked out to where the keycard had appeared from. It was close to the elevator.
Gunner didn’t want to waste time. He slid the keycard through the reader. The light on the reader turned green and the sound of the door unlocking resonated through the room.
“There’s no one here, Gunner,” one of the men investigating the noise said.
“Yeah, no one,” the other said.
Jack walked up behind one of them grabbed him by the neck. He counted to three and then placed his unconscious body on the ground. He did the same to other.
Gunner didn’t respond to his men. He’d already forgotten about them. He just had one thing on his mind: Jack Spade.
He pushed his way into the long, dark hallway that held the solitary cells. Jack followed. He snuck from shadow to shadow.
“Jack!” Gunner yelled. “Are you sleeping!? Are you dreaming?” Gunner knocked on the solitary cell doors. “You’re going to die, Jack. You thought that little move you pulled on me in the 77th was worth it, huh? You thought you’d get away with it? You’re in my world now! This is my world! And I sentence you to death!”
Jack rolled his eyes. He decided to play along. He covered his mouth with his hand to make it sound like he was still in a cell.
“Gunner?” Jack said. “Is that you?”
“Oh, Jack,” Gunner said. “It’s so good to hear your voice. Rikers is on fire because of you. This prison burns because of you!”
“What do you want?” Jack said.
One of the inmates turned around. They thought they heard something. They did. Jack’s fist met his face before he could alert Gunner. He grabbed the unconscious inmates body before it hit the ground and placed him down.
“Oh,” Gunner said, “I want you, Jack. I want you spit roasted on a fire. I want to see your flesh flake away from your bones.”
“Is that some sort of sick fantasy,” Jack said. “You always seemed a little strange.”
Jack silently ran up behind another one of the inmates and whacked him in the head with the combat knife. He placed the inmate on the ground.
“Your file said you were behind this door?” Gunner said. He hadn’t yet turned around. He hadn’t noticed that the rest of his crew were dropping like flies.
“Uh, Gunner,” an inmate said. He tapped Gunner on the shoulder.
“What?”
Gunner turned around. He saw the damage.
“Who’s out here? Show yourself?”
Gunner had a gun. A pump-action. He heard a noise. He aimed the shotgun in the direction it came from and fired.
The thunderclap from the gun echoed through the narrow passageway.
Gunner looked left to right. His face was panic stricken. His blood pressure was rising.
The other inmate with him fell to the ground. He was unconscious.
“Goddamnit! You coward! Is that you, Jack!? Is that you!?”
Jack stepped forward, revealing himself. The lone light inside the solitary hallway shone above his head.
In a state of shock, Gunner fell backward. He fired the shotgun accidentally as he hit the ground. He missed Jack completely. Jack walked forward, slowly. He pulled out the blade he’d been using to take care of Gunner’s thug. He flicked it open.
Gunner crawled backward. The keycard Jack had retrieved for him had fallen out of his pocket and was on the ground in front of Jack.
Jack picked it up.
Gunner was against the doorway of the solitary cell Worley’s correctional officer’s had pulled Jack from earlier that day.
“Please,” Gunner said. “I was just… I was just…”
Jack stood over the whimpering Gunner. He slid the keycard through the door’s keylock. It dinged and opened.
“Get in,” Jack said.
“Uh,” Gunner said. He looked around him. “What?”
“Get in.”
“I…”
“Get in.”
Tear’s streamed down Gunner’s face. He crawled in to the solitary cell.
“Kill me,” Gunner said. “Kill me. Please.”
Gunner knew his fate would be worse than death. The Riker’s guards who’d died would make his life a living hell. He’d be blamed for all the killing, for all the death.
“Please,” Gunner screamed. “Please!”
Jack tossed the combat knife into the cell with Gunner. He shut the solitary door, leaving Gunner in darkness. He slid the keycard through the keylock. Gunner’s screams echoed louder than the shotgun blast.
Jack walked back to the elevator, and then made his way back through the sewer toward building three. He made his way up the mossy ladd
er. The three men who’d been watching the dead bodies of the correctional officers burn looked at Jack with stunned expressions. The one holding the shot gun reached for it. The other holding the metal pipe ran toward Jack.
Jack pulled out Worley’s pistol and shot them both.
The blast cracked like thunder.
Both inmates dropped dead. There was one smoking hole in each of their heads.
The other inmates in D-Yard ran.
“It’s over,” Jack said. “The cops will be here any second. You’d best lock yourselves up. They won’t be kind if they find you.”
Jack walked back to the hallway that led to the lobby. The correctional office outfit was where he’d left it. He put it back on.
The correctional officers were still outside discussing their breach strategies.
“Hey,” the lead officer said. “Where the fuck have you been? It’s been over an hour.”
Jack’s helmet was pulled over his face. No one could recognize. Not even the NYPD cops who’d shown up to offer support.
“The riots over,” Jack said.
“What?”
“Your men can secure the building. The riot is over. The inmates had a change of heart.”
The lead looked at Jack skeptically. Seeing as the man he’d sent in there an hour earlier had just casually walked out with not a blemish on him, he decided not to argue. He snapped his fingers and sent in the rest of his correctional officers.
Jack left.
“Where are you going?” the lead said. “Aren’t you going to help with the clean up?”
“No.”
Jack hopped into the back of a departing on-call correctional staff truck.
It drove toward the control building and Riker’s Island Bridge.
No one asked Jack who he was.
No one cared.
The men in the back of the truck were just happy to be heading home.
65
Riker’s Island Bridge was packed. It took an hour to get past the control building. Two dozen NYPD vehicles: cruisers, vans and trucks came to the island during the emergency call. They all had to return to the city.
The truck crossed the Rikers Island Channel of the East river and Bowery Bay. A plane took off from LaGuardia. Jack followed its ascent into the sky. He watched it until it disappeared behind a thick cloud.
It took over an hour to get back into Astoria Heights. He was in the Bronx. He didn’t know how long he had, though.
The NYPD presence on the island would definitely be looking to speak to the warden. Once they found his dead body, they’d go from cell to cell and start looking at the security footage. It wouldn’t take them that long to put the pieces together. Jack Spade was loose. He expected to his face on televisions across the city within the hour.
The prison guard truck drove to a drop off station close to the island. It was in a parking lot just outside the Bowery Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant. As the doors to the back of the truck opened, Jack hopped out. He didn’t turn around. The other off-duty on-call prison guards grouped together and talked about their close call back on the island. They didn’t notice the guard who didn’t take off his helmet disappear. They didn’t care. They were busy talking about which bar they were going to get shit faced at.
Jack made his way from the drop off spot to Brooklyn. As he walked toward the Grand Central Parkway he took off his riot helmet and tossed it in a dumpster.
He needed to change his clothes. He couldn’t be walking through the streets of the city dressed like a Rikers guard. There was a laundry close by. He walked inside.
He found an unattended machine and grabbed some clothes from it. He took the clothes and left. He didn’t care what they looked like. As long as they were men’s clothes, which they were, he’d be fine. He went to a coffee shop and walked into the restroom. He locked the door. He put on the civvies; denim jeans, an undershirt, and a brown sweater. The clothes must’ve belonged to an old man.
He tossed his Rikers uniform into a garbage can and left the coffee shop.
He walked for hours.
He needed to get something from his apartment. He needed to grab the little red key he kept in his closet.
By the time he got there. He saw his face on a television screen in the display window of a pawn shop. They were looking for him again. They knew he was on the loose. Surprise, surprise.
He was across the street from his building.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
He made his way toward it and ran up the stairs to his apartment.
Yellow police tape had sealed his unit off. The NYPD had been on scene.
Jack knocked on the door.
He heard footsteps.
Slow, laborious footsteps.
He still had Worley’s gun. He grabbed hold of it.
The door opened.
“Jack?”
O’Malley, the detective who’d been asleep at his desk in the 77th a week earlier, was standing at Jack’s door. He looked at Jack with a stunned expression. His mouth was agape. Jack could see the the glob of half chewed tuna sandwich inside it.
He pushed O’Malley inside the apartment.
The old detective fell backward.
Jack caught him before he hit the ground.
“Listen, you dumb piece of shit,” Jack said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
O’Malley started choking.
Jack rolled his eyes.
He picked the fat detective up and gave him the heimlich maneuver.
The fat chunk of tuna landed on Jack’s carpet.
O’Malley wheezed. He gathered his breath. Things were happening too fast.
“Freeze!”
For fuck’s sake, thought Jack. He turned around.
D’Angelo, O’Malley’s partner, the one with the bum ticker had his gun aimed at Jack. He was sweating profusely. His face was turning red.
“Put your gun down,” Jack said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
D’Angelo looked down at his partner. O’Malley nodded, coughed, and slowly tried to pull himself up. He was struggling.
D’Angelo lowered his gun and wiped his brow.
“What the hell are you doing here?” O’Malley said. “You should be at Rikers.”
“I got out,” Jack said. He extended his hand and helped O’Malley up.
“You killed a cop,” D’Angelo said. “You’re… You’re…”
“I’m under arrest?” Jack finished. “Really?”
“Yes,” D’Angelo said.
“I just saved your partner’s life,” Jack said. “I could’ve let him die. I could’ve killed you to.”
D’Angelo considered Jack’s scenario. He smiled.
“What the hell is going on?” O’Malley said.
Jack didn’t have time to explain to two dumbass detectives what the hell was going on, but they may be useful. As he thought about it, he walked to his bedroom and opened his closet and grabbed the red key.
“What’s going on?” O’Malley said, impatiently. “Tell us!”
D’Angelo sat down on Jack’s couch. His heart was pounding. He reached for his medicine in his pocket. He popped a couple pills.
“I didn’t kill the missing cop,” Jack said. “I didn’t kill the federal agents. I didn’t kill Lyle Cunningworth.”
“Then who did?”
“Igor Grekovitch.”
“The gangster?”
“Who else?”
“How’d he get away with it?” O’Malley said. “He was on stage with he mayor and the commissioner at city hall.”
“I know,” Jack said. “I was there, remember.”
Both old detectives nodded.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” D’Amigo said.
“Finally,” said Jack. “The first good question. The only way you’re going to know I’m telling you the truth is if you have the evidence.”
“Yeah,” D’Amigo said. “So where is it?”
“I d
on’t have it,” Jack said.
Both detectives grimaced.
“I don’t have the evidence… yet.”
“Where is it?”
“Everything you need to put Igor away is in the basement of the club,” Jack said. “But you need to give me time to get it.”
“You could just be playing us,” D’Amigo said.
“I’ll tell you where you can find me,” said Jack. “If you don’t hear from me in twenty-four hours, then come looking for me at The Dacha House. I’ll be there.”
“You’re bullshitting us,” D’Amigo said.
“Both of you assholes would be dead right now if I didn’t calm you down,” Jack said. “Do you think I want you dead? Stop acting like dumbasses. You could both retire in peace in a few months. You could both be credited with helping to bring down Igor Grekovitch. I’m serious as a heart attack here.”
O’Malley and D’Amigo looked at each other then at Jack.
They nodded.
Jack had all he needed.
He left his apartment.
He had a storage locker in Queens that he’d need to visit. Inside would be everything he would need to take Igor on.
It was time to clean the streets of New York.
66
The storage locker facility was located in the west end of Queens in College Point. It was close to the water and was just off the Whitestone Expressway. The guy who ran it collected old storage bins from shipping companies and repurposed them for his needs. Jack liked him because he didn’t ask a lot of questions. As long as you paid, he didn’t give a shit about what you stored.
Jack purchased the bin years ago. It was after he threw in his badge.
He didn’t put the container under his name.
He walked up to the booth.
The man working inside had a big belly and was wearing a shirt too small. His left hand was stuffed down his pants and his right was scrolling through a game on his phone.
Jack knocked on the window.
The man looked at him. Stunned. He pulled the hand out of his pants and sat up.
“Uh, Excuse me,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I need access to my locker.”
The man stuffed his hand into a bag of Doritos and stuffed some chips into his mouth. He used the same hand that was down his pants. He put his phone down and picked up the rolodex. The facility didn’t use computers for anything. “What name is it under?”
