“Citizen’s arrest,” I said.
“Is that even a thing?” said the kid.
“Well, I’m a former Marine, too, so you’re just gonna have to take my word for it. Got him on attempted rape, kidnap, murder. Remember that black man who was shot outside the news agency a week ago?”
“Yeah,” said the kid behind the desk.
“Yeah,” I said, “that was the guy who done it.”
And then the kid’s eyes widened and his mouth opened. “That’s where I seen you before. You were on TV. You were arrested for murder! That murder. The black guy. Then, you escaped.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but I didn’t commit that murder. Mathers here did. That’s why I escaped, found the scumbag and brought him in here. Now give me those fucking keys.”
The kid moved back away from the counter. “I ain’t givin’ you those keys, man.”
Mathers sneered and started to laugh in my ear. I smashed his face into the glass partition, and then wrenched him back. His forehead left an oily bloody smear on the plexiglass.
“Kid, give me the fucking keys.”
“I ain’t doin’ that,” he said once more. “Hell . . .” and he picked up the phone and began pressing buttons, trying to read numbers off the sheets of paper Blu-Tacked to the wall over the phone.
I could hear the dial tone, and then the fact it wasn’t connecting. No one answered. He tried another number, another dial tone, another beep as the tone petered out. Another voicemail, “Hi you’ve reached. . . .”
“Just give me the goddamn keys, kid,” I said. “Nothing happens to you. I put this guy in a cell, lock him up, go away, and we all go home happy.”
I pointed at the TV. “I’ll even go down there and give Chief McNamara the key. You can even watch me do it on the screen.”
The kid trembled as he came forward, the keys held out in front of him as if he were approaching a rabid polar bear, I held my hand out. He dropped the keys into my palm, and jerked his hand back. He skipped back away from me as far as he could and made sure to keep the glass between us.
“Thanks, kid,” I said. “Hey, what do you earn?” I said turning back towards him.
“Hey, I ain’t telling you that. That’s private. None of your business.”
“Alright. Well, I’ll come back and give you some money, maybe double what you earn in a year, so think about it. Whatever the figure is. Anyway, you be a good boy now. You watch that TV and when you see me hand these keys over to your chief, you know I’m true to my word.”
The kid nodded, slunk down into a chair, and put the phone to his ear and started pushing buttons as I frog-marched Irving Mathers down the hallway. We turned left and right and left again, walking through shut doors until I found the overnight cells and pushed him into one. I slammed shut the door, turned the key, and stepped out of the precinct station, keys in hand.
Back in the 18-wheeler, I headed downtown.
I pulled the truck to the side of the barricades in the center of Savannah and hopped down out of the cab. I surveyed the scene. There were EMTs everywhere, police, blue lights, red lights, people running left, right and center, flashbulbs going off, newscasters standing in front of cameras with mics held up to their faces.
I avoided them all and headed for the one figure who stood out in the center of it all. She was hunched over, but she was clearly in control. I walked right up to her, held out the keys. She took them from my hand.
“Chief,” I said and nodded, “I put someone in your cells who caused part of this. He killed that man outside the news agency the other day, the one I was framed for murdering.”
She looked me up and down. “I’m not sure I’m happy to see you, Ray.”
“The car accident?” I asked.
“This whole mess,” she said. “Seems like it had something to do with you every single bit along the way.”
“I think you’ll find, McNamara,” I said, “that that first murder, the guy heading home for his anniversary, Chris Mayweather, that was your guys who did that.”
And just then, a surge of electric guitar and drums thundered out from all of the radios in the square, from all of the public address systems, from all of the TVs at the front of the square above the podium. The screens lit up with the face of Jimmy Barrens, sitting behind a drum kit and crooning into a microphone. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard, a song about peace and freedom and coming together, and every single person in that square and every single person in that city and in our beautiful country looked to a screen or to a radio or to a TV or up at the public address systems in their workplace and listened to this song, and I stepped forward and put one arm around McNamara’s shoulder and she put one around mine.
“It’s gonna be a damn good article,” I said, and she smiled and nodded at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded again.
“I’d say about five years’ worth of therapy okay, but okay, nonetheless. You?”
“I’ll never be okay,” I said, “but I did win a lot of money. Do you know of any bars near here?”
McNamara signaled to Carter. “You take over here. We’re heading to the bar around the corner. Murphy’s Law on West River Street.”
Lieutenant Carter saluted. “Sure thing, boss.”
And before I knew it, I was sitting in a dark recesses of an Irish bar, my back against the hard wood pew, facing Eliza McNamara on the other side, hearing the most beautiful sound in the world: the trickling of whiskey over a large chunk of ice and gurgling down my throat.
I let out a deep sigh and reveled in the silence of the quiet, quiet bar.
“Do you think any of this will change anything?” asked Eliza.
And just then, my phone rang, the ringtone a biting, grinding, horrible sound that made me jerk it out of my pocket, smile apologetically at Eliza and place the receiver to my ear. I heard the second most beautiful sound in the world.
“Hello, darling,” said a voice I’d come to love and hate with the same ferocity, the voice of my editor’s wife. “I hear you’re a very rich man. Don’t think that makes me look at you any differently, Ray.”
“I won’t.”
“When are you coming back here?”
I offered McNamara another apologetic smile and stood up and moved off into the darkness of the bar. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I said.
“In a Rolls-Royce?” she said.
“No, I was thinking something a little less obvious; perhaps a Harley-Davidson.”
She laughed a high-pitched laugh, sucked in on the cigarette I could hear she was smoking. Then a voice, a gruff grumbly voice in the background, said: “Is that Ray? Put him on.”
“No, no,” I protested, but Ed’s voice came barreling down the line anyway.
“What the fuck is this I see you caught up in?”
I shook my head. “A damn good story, Ed. A damn good story.”
Ed grunted something, as I tipped the rest of my whiskey down my throat.
“I’ll be the judge of that, Ray.”
THE END
The story continues in The Stain.
Don’t forget to sign up to Aaron Leyshon’s Crime Squad newsletter, where you’ll be the first to find out when new Ray Hammer novels are published (and usually with a heavy discount for subscribers during the first 48 hours). To signup simply fill out the form here: https://aaronleyshon.com/
As an added bonus and to say thank you for joining the exclusive Crime Squad, you’ll receive a free copy of Die a Little: A Ray Hammer Short Story.
If you enjoyed reading The Deal, let your friends know about it. How?
LEND A COPY. This eBook is lending enabled. All your friend needs is an amazon account and an email address.
1Go to the Manage Your Content and Devices and locate the title you'd like to loan.
2Select the Actions button then select Loan this title on your eligible title.
3Enter the recipient's personal email
address and optional message then select Send.
4Select Send now and a book loan notification is sent to the recipient.
Or if you’re reading a paperback, just hand it to them.
RECOMMEND IT. You’ve found a good thing, share it around. People will love you for it. Share this book with your friends, family, priest (well maybe not your priest), readers groups, book clubs, on social media and in discussion boards.
LEAVE A REVIEW. It doesn’t have to be much. Just 20 words about why you liked this book is enough to let someone else know it’s worth reading. Plus you’ll earn my eternal gratitude, because every review makes it possible for someone to read about Ray Hammer. If you do write a review… no matter how glowing (or negative) send me an email at [email protected], so I can thank you with a personal email and a crazy meme.
The Fight (A Ray Hammer Novel Book 4) Page 9
