Devil's Dance (Trackdown Book 1)

by Michael A. Black

  “I will,” Eagan said.

  “One more thing.” Von Dien’s eyes shifted to Fallotti.

  “Mr. Von Dien is understandably concerned about this not leading back to him,” the lawyer said. “At some point down the road.”

  Eagan glanced at Von Dien and then Fallotti. “No loose ends?”

  “Exactly,” the lawyer said. “No loose ends.”

  Chapter Four

  5:00 A.M.

  Just Outside Of Phoenix, Arizona

  Wolf worked his way up the winding path on the mountain, feeling the sweat pouring off him in the early morning heat. It was four miles to the top, then four miles back down. Going down was a little harder on the knees, but definitely easier overall than going up. If anything could be considered easy in the escalating temperature of the desert. Still, it was nothing compared to Iraq, the ultimate Sandbox.

  So far, in the three months or so he’d been back he hadn’t done much else besides run and workout and go to school. He’d done nothing in the way of bounty hunting after moving into a make-shift room above Mac’s garage. It was small, but after spending close to four years in an 8 by 10 cell, it seemed luxurious: his own bed, a small kitchen, his own shower and toilet, and a separate entrance from the house.

  All he needed now was someplace to go.

  At Mac’s insistence he’d started to get his life back in order. He’d gotten his driver’s license, a passport, and enrolled in a couple of night courses, Introduction to Law Enforcement and English 101 at the community college. He didn’t even mind taking the bus to get there. It was a reminder of his freedom. Sometimes Mac would suggest Kasey could give him a ride when she was going to her classes at the university, but Wolf usually declined. She wasn’t a bad looking girl, mid-to late twenties with the slim, angular build of a natural athlete, but she hardly went out of her way to speak to Wolf at all. In fact, she seemed more than just a little bit resentful that her father had brought him into their circle. Her snide comment the day they’d met still rang in his ears: “Well, it looks like dad finally got the son he always wanted.”

  Nothing like making a guy feel welcome, especially when he was already feeling like a free loader. But he knew she had a rough lot to plow: a single mom with a small kid and a worthless ex, not to mention having had grown up with Mac as an absentee father due to his many deployments—something he’d repeatedly mentioned as one of his life’s biggest regrets. She’d been a late blessing from his second marriage, another one that had ended badly, but despite that, Mac had said that his relationship with his only child had improved dramatically in the last year. And, more importantly, her son Chad seemed to be holding up well under it all. Whenever Kasey wasn’t studying or working on the computer, she was doting on her kid. She was something of an exercise fiend, too, getting up early to do a run or ride her bicycle. Wolf had offered to run with her early on, but she’d shut him down, saying she preferred to run alone.

  “It’s one of the few times I have to think,” she said.

  He got the hint.

  Most nights when she wasn’t in class, she was going out to dinner with Rodney, the lawyer who was handling her divorce. Wolf suspected the guy was handling a little more than just that.

  But that doesn’t concern me, Wolf thought, although he kind of pitied Rodney in a way. Who’d want to be caught playing hide the salami with Big Jim McNamara’s daughter?

  Besides, Wolf had made up his mind that until he got himself squared away and back on his feet, any thoughts of romance were out of the question. But he had gone for coffee once with Consuelo Ruiz, the pretty Mexican-American girl he’d met in his English class. But that was at Mac’s urging after he saw them talking outside the building a few days ago. Mac had approached him the next day and asked who that “pretty little gal was,” and Wolf had told him.

  “Ruiz, huh?” McNamara raised an eyebrow. “You know, I think you’d best ask her out for coffee after class next time.”

  “What, are you playing matchmaker now?”

  “She sounds like a hot tamale.” Mac’s grin seemed to hold something more than mere wishful thinking on the behalf of his friend and protégé. “Show some interest in her. Speak a little Spanish to her. You still know how to do that, right?”

  “Sí, mas o menos.”

  McNamara winked “Well, do that then. Ask about her family, where she lives, stuff like that. Girls like that.”

  This struck Wolf as odd. “Why? You thinking of asking her out after I do?”

  McNamara flashed him a lascivious smile. “Not me. I’m all business.”

  That seemed like a strange reply to Wolf, but he dismissed it.

  The coffee chat had gone well, and he’d actually been thinking about asking her out on a real date but decided against it. He was still basically broke, living off the largess of McNamara, and still feeling guilty that Mac was treating him like family.

  Plus, as far as going out with a girl, it had been a long time. Too long.

  In some ways, he regretted that he hadn’t taken Mac up on his offer to do a stopover at a “gentleman’s club” outside of Las Vegas. But a quick lap-dance by some bored hooker wasn’t what Wolf wanted. He was holding out for something more meaningful. Something real. Something special. Something that he’d lost. But only when he felt the time was right.

  It all added up to be another wall between him and the rest of the world. No matter which side he found himself on, he felt like an outsider.

  No, “outsider” wasn’t the right word. “Freeloader” was more like it.

  Mac had picked him up from Leavenworth, fed him, clothed him, paid his tuition, and even offered to pay for a plane trip back to Lumberton to see his mother—something Wolf declined. He wasn’t ready to see her, to go back home. Not until he had reestablished himself. Not till he felt redeemed. If he could ever feel that way. The feelings of guilt lingered in him, and he wished he could put them in a locked box somewhere in his mind and forget about them. But he couldn’t. The only thing he’d been able to forget was the exact sequence of events during those crucial few lost minutes back there in Iraq, and that hadn’t been intentional. If only he could remember them. Maybe they would provide some kind of answer.

  He wondered, too, about Mac’s motivation. Why was he doing all this? What was in it for him? Did he really want Wolf as a partner in his bounty hunting business, or was he looking, as Kasey had said, for a surrogate son?

  Wolf pushed the thoughts out of his mind as he rounded the curve and saw the white post signaling the four-mile marker. Almost to the top. His fingers traced over the marker as he completed his circle and paused to take a drink from his water bottle before heading back down.

  Just like making the half-way point in your deployment tour in the Sandbox, he thought. It’s all downhill from here.

  Wolf heard the light tapping on the door just as he was drying himself off from the shower. He figured it was Mac, but slipped the towel around his waist, just in case Kasey was with him, and yelled, “It’s open.”

  McNamara walked in with a grin and a laptop. “I hope you’re not dropping your guard, leaving your door unlocked when you’re taking a shower and then walking around half naked and unprotected.”

  Wolf chuckled and tossed the towel on his sofa.

  “Nothing to steal in here,” he said. “And I figure if any unauthorized personnel violated the perimeter, you’ll have them in your sights as soon as they come down the road from the highway.”

  McNamara smiled. “Depending on an old man like me to protect you?”

  “You ain’t that old.” Wolf slipping on his underwear and T-shirt. “Besides, I’m depending on you for just about everything else, right? And also wondering exactly how it is I’m going to pay you back.”

  McNamara made a dismissive gesture and set the laptop on the small kitchen table. “You learning anything in them classes?”

  “Yeah. In the classic literature section, we’re studying about a guy named Sisyphus.” />
  “What did he write?”

  “He didn’t have time to write,” Wolf said with a grin. “He spent most of his time pushing a big rock up the side of a mountain only to have it roll down the other side when he got to the top.”

  McNamara snorted. “Sounds like he musta been an army lifer. Anyway, I got me an idea, since you’re almost finished with your first college course in the law.”

  “It was a short course.” Wolf smirked as he pulled on his socks and pants. “And I’d hardly equate it with Harvard law school.”

  “You young college fuckers are all alike.” McNamara said. “It’s a good basic background for getting you established as a bail enforcement agent. Say, I forgot to ask you how your date went with that little hot tamale?”

  “It wasn’t much of a date. All we did was go out for coffee.”

  “You try speaking some Spanish to her? I heard those Latina chicks like that.”

  “I have to keep in practice, don’t I?”

  “You offer to see her home?”

  “How could I do that? Give her a ride on the handlebars of my bicycle? I don’t have a car, remember?”

  “We start making some good pinches we’ll rectify that.” McNamara winked. “Besides, if it’s a matter of you achieving number two on that list, I’ll let you drive the Escalade.”

  “Number two?”

  “Getting laid.” McNamara said. “Wouldn’t want you to forget how it’s done.”

  Wolf frowned. “I think I can remember.”

  McNamara grinned. “You give her a little goodbye kiss after the coffee?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Wolf shook his head. “But you ought to know. I saw you driving by.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I figured you were you checking up on me.”

  McNamara compressed his lips, said nothing for several seconds, then, “Never mind. Let’s go into Phoenix and go see Shemp. He finally got back to me after these months.”

  The way he said “Shemp” made Wolf wonder how much Kasey’s father approved of his daughter’s choice of a beau.

  “Rod?” Wolf asked. “Got back to you about what?”

  “I contacted him a while ago asking him to look into your case.”

  “My case? You did?”

  McNamara nodded. “And wish you wouldn’t call him Rod. Remember, he’s dating my daughter.”

  Wolf nodded. He wondered what news Shemp had, and if it would be good or bad.

  Bad, probably, Wolf thought.

  But he was curious just the same. Maybe, just maybe …

  “Now get rid of that damn T-shirt,” McNamara said. “Put on one of those nice polo shirts I bought you.” He fingered the collar of his sleeveless, camouflaged, BDU blouse. “Ain’t you never heard of the saying, the clothes making the man? You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

  “Just who am I supposed to impress?”

  “You’ll see.”

  As they went down the stairs into the garage, McNamara threw a quick punch at the Wolf’s old, suspended army duffle that Wolf had hung from the cross-beam. He’d filled it with sand and used it for his heavy bag work. The black paint that they’d used at Leavenworth to block out his name and serial number was almost all beaten away now.

  “You keeping in shape with all this stuff?” McNamara asked, glancing at the speed bag in the corner. He’d bought and erected it as a surprise after he’d seen Wolf working out.

  Wolf pivoted and shot a quick hook-kick into the speedbag.

  “With a little luck,” McNamara said, “you’ll be doing that to some prospective bounty’s head pretty soon.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  McNamara grunted in approval. “Say, my contact at Leavenworth finally got back to me on that son of a bitch that pulled a knife you.”

  “It wasn’t a knife. It was a shank. A filed down, pointed piece of plastic. They make them out of toothbrushes or anything else they can find.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever. His name’s Eric Phipps. Ring any bells?”

  Wolf shook his head.

  “He was a new arrival,” McNamara said. “Last visitor was his lawyer.”

  “What was he in for?”

  “Aggravated assault on an officer. Doing ten to fifteen.”

  “Figures,” Wolf said.

  “You still got no idea what it was all about?”

  “Inside it could be anything. Somebody stepping in front of somebody else in the chow line, an imagined slight in the athletic yard …”

  “Sounds like some rules of engagement I wouldn’t care for. Glad you’re outta there.”

  “That makes two of us,” Wolf said.

  As they went outside and headed for McNamara’s big Escalade, Kasey pulled up in her silver colored Toyota Celica. McNamara slowed and watched with grandfatherly pride as his Chad waved to him front the rear car seat.

  Kasey got out and walked over to give her father a quick hug. She gave a quick nod to Wolf and then turned to open the door to remove her son.

  “You guys going somewhere?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” McNamara said. “We’re going to see your lawyer friend.”

  “Rod?” she said. “What about?”

  McNamara shot Wolf a quick look and rolled his eyes.

  “Just some legal stuff. Then I thought we’d go try to drum up some business from Manny. You get a chance to run that guy I asked you about?”

  “I did,” she said, taking the baby into her arms. “Come on into my office and I’ll give it to you.”

  Wolf started to turn, but McNamara quickly put a hand out and flipped him the car keys. “I’ll get it. You just go start up the beast there and make sure that air-conditioning’s on high by the time I get back.”

  Wolf watched the two of them head for the house, where Kasey maintained her computer and office files, and wondered if he was ever going to quit feeling like an outsider.

  But at least I’m getting to start up the Escalade, he thought.

  The office of Rodney F. Shemp, Attorney at Law was on the top floor of a five-story office building down the street from one of the courthouses. They had to call up to the suite first to get the special code to use the elevator. McNamara swore and shook his head.

  “What kind of a wimp would have a system like that?” he said.

  “A careful one,” Wolf said. “Considering the type of clientele he deals with.”

  The office itself was fairly spacious. A pretty girl with auburn hair sat at a desk devoid of anything except a phone and a computer monitor. She looked up, smiled, took their names, and purred into the phone.

  After she told them to “Go right in,” Mac winked at her and tipped his hat.

  She blushed.

  Always the ladies’ man, Wolf thought.

  Shemp’s office had numerous wooden filing cabinets and the lawyer hunched over a traditional mahogany desk with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He stood and offered his hand, first to McNamara and then to Wolf. He looked to be in his early thirties with a full head of brown hair, an athlete’s build that was starting to go to seed a bit, and friendly smile which remained frozen on his face as they sat in the two chairs in front. McNamara removed his cowboy hat and set it on the corner of the desk.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Shemp,” Wolf said.

  “Please, call me Rod.”

  Wolf shot a quick glance at McNamara, who was leaning forward massaging his temples.

  “Well, Steve,” Shemp said, clearing his throat. “I’ve had a chance to go over the transcripts of your court martial in depth.”

  Wolf thought the man’s smile looked nervous and got the feeling whatever the lawyer was going to say wasn’t going to be promising. Of course, who wouldn’t be nervous having his girlfriend’s father show up when there was bad news on the horizon?

  “I knew this was going to be an uphill battle,” Shemp continued. “Appeals usually are.”

  He’s trying to let me down easy, Wolf thought.


  “I didn’t really find much in the way of improper procedure. That means our chances for an appeal and a reversal are—” He clucked sympathetically. “Kinda slim.”

  Wolf nodded, saying nothing. This wasn’t anything that he hadn’t heard before.

  McNamara muttered “Shit,” under his breath.

  “On the bright side, your Army lawyer was able to avoid the more serious charges with the plea bargain. But your plea to conduct unbecoming and negligence in causing the death of the Iraqi civilians, even though you did it under the auspices of an Alford plea, still stands as a conviction on your record.”

  Hearing it recounted, it all seemed like a bad dream to Wolf now. Back then he’d gone on faith, way out of his element in the courtroom, acting on what he hoped was the best advice. It was definitely somebody else’s battlefield.

  “What the hell’s an Alford plea?” McNamara asked.

  Shemp took a deep breath. “It’s basically pleading guilty while maintaining your innocence, because the prosecution has more than enough evidence to prove you guilty.”

  “Sounds like a lot of lawyer horseshit to me,” McNamara said.

  Shemp emitted a nervous laugh. “But, despite your guilty plea, at least there was no allocution on your part.”

  “Allo-what?” McNamara said. “Will you start speaking English, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Allocution―an admission of guilt in open court, hence the Alford plea. It stems from an old case in North Carolina where a man plead guilty to avoid the death penalty but maintained his innocence. It went all the way to the Supreme Court.”

  Wolf nodded. “I wasn’t going to admit to something I didn’t do,” he said. “Besides, I actually was telling the truth. A lot of it was a blank. Still is. I honestly can’t remember parts of it.”

  “A head injury can do that sometimes,” McNamara said. “In time it could come back.”

  Shemp glanced at him, his head bobbling like one of those flocked dogs on the dashboard. “Oh, absolutely.”