by J C Ryan
Money laundering.
Rex couldn’t see a way to enter and confront the owner without the risk of causing a public scene. There were too many ‘customers’.
Promptly as six p.m., a last handful of customers came out the door one after the other and the lights went out in the shop.
Rex was relieved.
Digger was getting restless, and they both could use some food, but first he wanted to question the proprietor.
However, no one else came out after someone he couldn’t see on the inside flipped the Open sign to Closed.
***
REX WAS ABOUT to get out of the van when his attention was drawn to a commotion a few doors from the shop he was watching. He looked over and saw a man dressed in jeans, cotton shirt, and black denim jacket, surrounded by what looked like a bunch of rough guys. As he watched, one of them hit the man in the denim jacket with a cricket bat between the shoulders. He went down, and three of the thugs jumped on him, punching, and yelling. Two of them, one short and fat the other tall and skinny, remained on their feet dancing around kicking at their victim.
The man in the denim jacket was hopelessly outnumbered and if the attack continued he would soon be dead. Rex jumped out of the van with Digger on his heels. A desperate scream rang out, and he broke into a run. Digger shot forward like a bullet out of a gun. By the time Rex got to the scene, Digger already had the short fat man by the arm, holding on as he screamed in shock, shaking him, and trying to get away. The tall skinny one was hightailing it down the street, apparently wanting none of the fight if a dog was involved.
Rex yanked up the first guy he could get a hand on from the scrum on the ground. He held him by the front of his shirt and clocked him with a vicious right hook, which lifted him off his feet and smashed the back of his head into the wall behind him, where he slowly slithered to the ground. Minus a few of his teeth.
One down, two to go.
Digger’s screaming fat man finally broke free, turned and followed the skinny man down the road. Digger didn’t give chase. The fight was still on, so he ignored the retreating thug and went for one of those on the ground, a man with a red shirt, grabbed him by the leg and started pulling him away.
Rex reached into the pile for another one, picked him up by his hair, but as he drew back his fist to land an almighty punch, the guy yelled “Police!” Rex saw it was man with the denim jacket, the victim.
He didn’t have time to ask for a badge. The last man on the ground was rising in his direction with a huge knife in his right hand. Rex let go of the guy’s hair and kicked the guy with the knife in the nuts. His contribution to India’s birth control efforts. As the man doubled over, Rex stepped up and hit him with the right knee in the face. Game over for this hooligan.
Rex looked around to see if there were more and saw the man who yelled that he was a policeman chasing after the fat man waddling down the street. He was about thirty yards away. Rex pointed at the fleeing man and said to Digger, “Get him!”
Digger let go of the man with the red shirt and headed down the street. Rex took a step towards the man in the red shirt who was now on all fours trying to get to his feet and kicked him in the face, breaking his jaw and laying him out flat on his back on the pavement.
The fight was over.
Rex looked down the road and saw Digger had passed the policeman and caught up with fat man, jumped from about two yards away and caught the poor sod by the same arm he had him with before. The guy went down face first onto the pavement and Digger jumped onto his back and grabbed him by the neck.
The policeman caught up with the two of them but stopped a few yards away, too scared to get near the growling dog and its prey.
Rex was sure his three guys would not move soon, so he followed Digger and the ‘policeman’.
“Digger! Leave it!” he shouted.
Digger let go and stood back, allowing the policeman to get his hands on fat man. The policeman grabbed fat man by his healthy arm and hoisted him to his feet and shoved him back toward Rex. Fat man was moaning and groaning, sporting a lacerated arm and very little skin on the right side of his face.
“Thanks for the help. Good dog you have there. Is she licensed? You can’t have an attack dog here, even though I’m grateful to her and you.” The policeman said between heavy breaths.
“She’s a he,” Rex corrected.
“Huh?”
“The dog is male not female.”
The policeman looked at Rex then at Digger and apologized.
“And yes, he’s licensed,” Rex said. “My service dog, not an attack dog.” He started to reach into his pocket.
“I’ll take your word for it,” the cop said. “I’m lucky you were here. As you can probably guess, I’m undercover. Or I was. Someone ratted me out, and these guys were going to kill me and make it look like a bad drug deal. I owe you and your dog my life.”
“It’s cool,” Rex said. “I don’t much like drug dealers, and I really don’t like cowards who send five guys to kill just one. It really isn’t sporting.”
The cop laughed. “You’re right. Now I need to ask you to stay here while I call for backup to pick these dirtbags up. You’ll need to make a statement.”
Rex wasn’t particularly keen to get involved with police. However, it would only create suspicion if he refused to give a statement. Realizing there wasn’t much he could do about it, he said, “Okay.”
Back at the spot where Rex had felled three of the attackers, they found them all still unconscious. Fat man was shoved to the ground, face down, hands behind his head, and told to stay that way.
“Guard,” Rex said to Digger.
Digger took up a position with his front legs on fat man’s back, which kept him unmoving and quiet.
“Funny command for a service dog,” the cop remarked.
“Yeah. Well, sometimes he needs to guard me,” Rex replied.
Within fifteen minutes, two police cars arrived, and the would-be murderers were cuffed and stuffed into the back. The undercover officer hitched a ride with Rex and Digger.
***
WHEN THEY GOT to the police station, Rex was offered some coffee. He took one sip and decided it was probably the worst coffee he ever had. He thanked the person and took another sip. It wouldn’t alleviate his hunger, but it had caffeine in it and that’s what he needed. He’d been awake since early the previous morning, and it would help keep him that way. He and Digger were sitting in an interview room when the undercover cop came in and closed the door.
“We didn’t introduce ourselves. I’m Aarav Patel. And you are?”
“Randall Dalvi,” Rex answered smoothly. It was the ID he was carrying. He just hoped the paper would stand up to examination if it was needed. He couldn’t help but notice that the officer had the same last name as the gangster he was hunting.
Hopefully not related.
“Interesting name. I’d have thought you were British, from your accent.” Patel said.
“I am. My parents emigrated before I was born.”
“Okay. Now I’d like to take your statement. How did it happen you were there when those guys jumped me?”
Rex began to spin a story about hearing the tobacconist shop had the best cigars and arriving just in time to see the shop close. “I was just about to drive away when I saw the scuffle in my rearview mirror,” he concluded. “You know the rest.”
Aarav, whose name meant ‘peaceful and wisdom’, nodded but gave Rex a knowing look. “And your service dog just happens to know how to take down a dangerous criminal.”
“Yes. Lucky, that, wouldn’t you say?”
“Right. Very lucky, I would say.”
Rex almost laughed, the guy’s tone was so sardonic.
Aarav looked at the closed door and lowered his voice.
“Mr. Dalvi, seriously, I’m grateful that you came to my rescue. I’ve also been a policeman for long enough to know there’s more to your story, but you seem to be an honorable man.
At least in this case you were on the right side of the law. I won’t trouble you. If there’s ever anything I can do for you…”
Rex smiled. “Now that you mention it. There is one thing. Do you know who owns that tobacconist shop? Does he run it himself? I need to talk to him.”
The cop shook his head. “I know him, and yeah, he’s there some of the time. He’s dirty, we know it and we’ve been trying for a long time, but we can’t pin anything on him. You don’t want to do business with him, or even talk to him. He’s bad news. You won’t be able to get close to him, anyway. He keeps four bodyguards around him all the time.”
“I want to talk to him about a business deal he recently made.”
The cop shook his head again. “Bad news, I’m telling you. I just hope you don’t intend to do business with him. That would land you on our watch list.”
“Nope. No such intentions, I just want some information from him and I’ll be on my way. I was waiting for him to leave his establishment,” Rex said. “But I don’t think he came out. Is there another way out of the shop?”
“The shop has a hallway in back that leads to the apartments above. He didn’t come out – just went home. He lives up there. You’d have to go through the bodyguards to get to him. Suicide mission.”
Rex had been up since early the previous morning. He didn’t think four bodyguards would be a problem, even without Digger. With Digger, it would be a piece of cake. But he was hungry and tired, not at his best, and getting himself injured or killed wouldn’t help Rehka. He considered the situation for almost a minute, with the cop staring at him, wanting to know his business with the owner, no doubt.
“If they’re anything like those clowns who attacked you earlier, I doubt I’ll have a problem,” he said looking at Digger. But Digger didn’t respond.
“They aren’t. Trust me, you don’t want to take them on alone. Those guys are big and mean.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Rex said. “Besides I am on a peaceful mission, I just need some information. That’s all.
“Can you recommend a place to stay and maybe someplace to eat around here? My business with him will keep until morning.”
The cop named a hotel and told Rex they had a good kitchen.
“Thanks, man. I’m beat. I’m going to check in and rest tonight. But I could use some help tomorrow.”
“I’ll meet you there at eight. The shop doesn’t open until nine, but maybe you’ll get lucky and see your man on the way to breakfast.”
“Thanks. Much appreciated.”
CHAPTER NINE
REX WAS ABLE to get a room where he could have Digger with him. He ordered food from room service and gave Digger his rations. Too tired to argue, he let Digger have half his food, showered, and then crawled in to the bed at an unfashionably early hour. He set an alarm on his watch, in case catching up on missed sleep kept him too far under to sense the time.
At six a.m., he woke refreshed, pulled on his clothes and went in search of a place to eat on an outside table, where Digger could be next to him. This time, he ordered a double breakfast, convinced Digger would talk him out of half of it again. He wasn’t disappointed. The first chance he got, he needed to put his foot down about the food situation. Digger may not understand it, but it was for his own good.
He arrived at the spot where he was to meet the cop at seven a.m., an hour early. He wanted to check things out before the cop arrived. He immediately noticed that although the sign still said closed, people were coming out the door in droves.
Rex reached under the dashboard, below the steering, unclipped a part of the panel and retrieved his Sig Sauer P226 where he’d stuck it with Velcro tape. He checked that the gun was loaded and put in the small of his back where it was covered by his denim jacket.
During a lull in the traffic coming out of the building, he went to the door and tugged it open.
Inside, another door immediately to the right led into the tobacco shop. However, the hallway ran back the full depth of the building, and on the other side from the shop, halfway back, two sets of elevators discharged a steady stream of residents. He walked to the end of the hall and discovered it teed into another hall leading to the right, behind the tobacco shop, and to the left, where it ended in a locked exit door.
Rex had noticed the notch in the wall when he’d checked for a back door, but he hadn’t thought it led from the shop – it was almost half a block away. Now he could see that, if one had the key, one could enter the shop, come out in the hallway, and exit through that other door unseen.
Rex mentally kicked himself. For all he knew, his target had left by that way the previous night. He didn’t want to pick the lock, alerting anyone who had a key that there was an intruder in the building. Instead, he retraced his steps, counting them for each leg of the journey, and walked to the end of the block where he’d gone around the night before. He entered the narrow opening and walked up the alleyway to the notch he’d observed yesterday, counting his steps again. He’d been right. The notch was approximately where he’d end up if he’d been able to go through the locked door. It had a door in it, oriented in the right direction.
Now he didn’t know whether his target was in the building or not. He walked back around to wait for the cop.
The cop was right on time, which Rex had learned was a rarity in this country. He greeted Rex with another caution. “I can’t condone violence, you understand. We have nothing concrete on this man. It wouldn’t be proper for me to engage in a fight with him. Or his bodyguards,” he added. Then he winked.
“I wouldn’t ask you to. Just watch the back door and let me know if I miss him, all right?”
“Okay,” said the cop.
Rex grinned. “You knew there was a back door. Why didn’t you tell me?”
The cop shrugged. “I thought you knew.”
Another time, Rex might have set him straight, but he’d been bone-tired the day before. He missed something obvious.
You’re on a mission Dalton, better shape up.
He watched the cop walk toward the end of the street and turn the corner. He was still dressed in street clothes, not a uniform. It was a good thing. They’d stood here talking in full view of many apartment windows. He could only hope that they hadn’t raised any suspicions.
Rex melted into a shadow on the other side of the street, where he could loiter unseen. Digger wriggled in behind him and lay down at his feet, between his heels and the wall. It made Rex have to lean a little further than he liked, but at least the dog wasn’t conspicuous that way. Rex crossed his arms and waited.
Another wave of people exited the building, maybe going to jobs that started later, or maybe the others were heading out early for breakfast. None of them seemed to be a criminal mastermind, but who was to say? Rex didn’t know what the guy looked like, but the chances were high that he wouldn’t exit the building without his bodyguards, and Rex hadn’t seen anyone with four people who seemed to be guarding him. A few people also entered.
Precisely at nine, the disembodied hand reached for the sign and flipped it again. The shop was open for business. That was Rex’s cue to go in, before the shop got busy.
A bell tinkled as he stepped into the shop through the interior door. Rex couldn’t see anyone but heard a female voice asking if she could help him. He searched for her. Rounding the corner of a bank of shelves, he found himself face-to-face, or rather face to his chest, with a diminutive Indian girl, maybe eighteen he reckoned. He’d expected a man, and one who was at least his size. The surprise left him stumbling for words for a moment. “I… uh…”
The girl switched to English. “May I help you?” she said again. Rex realized he’d left himself at a disadvantage by blurting out English words. To cover, he continued in English, but with a London accent.
“I’d like to speak to the proprietor. That is, to the owner, if they are not one and the same.” He tried an owlish look, working himself into the persona of an Oxf
ord don, or what he thought one would say.
The girl didn’t answer. Instead, she was staring at Digger as if she’d never seen a dog before.
“My service dog,” Rex explained. He tightened his hand on Digger’s leash, taking up a bit of slack.
“I see. I’m sorry, the proprietor, who is the owner, yes, is not here. May I help you?” The third time she asked.
Rex had finally regained his composure. He asked for a pack of Indian-made cigarettes and, while the girl was getting them, asked when the owner might be back.
The bell tinkled again, and Rex turned to see a grossly obese Indian man of about forty waddle in. “I’m Kabir Patel, the owner,” he said in English. “How may I help you?”
He must have heard me ask her. And what’s with this ‘how may I help you?’ Is that the only English they know?
Rex switched to Hindi. “I’d like to speak to you on a matter of some delicacy.”
He got no further before the man brushed past him and approached the girl. He bent and whispered into her ear, and then kissed her on the mouth. From her expression, she was as disgusted by it as Rex was. But she nodded and left without another word to Rex.
“I have sent her on a small errand. She’ll be back in a moment. What is the nature of your business?”
“Rehka Gyan,” he said, “Where is she?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you’re talking about.” The guy didn’t break a sweat, and his expression gave away nothing. Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not. Rex didn’t think so, and he wasn’t in the mood to play games.
“I think you do. Let’s go up to your apartment and see if she’s there.”
It was a calculated risk. The guy’s bodyguards were somewhere nearby, he assumed, but they weren’t in the shop. Maybe the errand the girl had been sent on was to collect them to come and get rid of Rex. The truth was, it would be better if they were there. He’d rather have them where he could see them.
The fat guy’s mouth twitched.
Almost a smile. So, the bodyguards are up there.
