Charged - Book One (6 page)

I slowly crept in and heard someone talking in my
bedroom. I wasn’t alone. Fortunately, they hadn’t heard me come up
the stairs. I tried to remember where all the creaks were in the
wood flooring and I didn’t see Zero anywhere.

They weren’t expecting me and when I got a clear
view, I recognized both of them as the same two guys I saw in the
café. It was unlikely I would return after the events that had
occurred earlier. Or, rather I should say, it would be really dumb
of me to return here.

I took two silent steps into my apartment and I could
see one of the guys was actually halfway under my bed. The other
was standing over him with his back to me, laughing at him.

“Come here, you stupid mutt!” I heard one of them
say.

Now I was pissed. Zero was a tiny dog, but he was my
tiny dog. I could hear him whimpering under the bed and I gritted
my teeth. Four more silent steps and I was right behind the guy
that was laughing.

I put the pistol to the back of his head and
whispered, “don’t say a word.”

He was silent and still. I checked under his arms and
removed a .44 I found in his left shoulder-holster. I then checked
the rest of his body for more guns in a record half a second.
Silently, I placed his gun on my dresser. Using his own cuffs, I
had his hands behind him and cuffed before his partner realized
that there was a third pair of occupied shoes in the room.

His partner’s gun was lying on the floor next to the
nightstand, but I rushed over to it and kicked it into the living
room before his hand reached it. This sent another shot of pain
through my knee which I tried to conceal.

“I’ve already got your buddy cuffed, so come out
slow!”

The man under the bed slowed his movements.

“I wanna’ see your hands now!”

The man moved his hands out where I could see them
and cautiously scooted out from under the bed.

“Get up!”

The man slowly stood, keeping his hands in the air.
He had to be six-foot-five. He was at least a half-foot taller than
the guy I cuffed and neither of them was scrawny. When he saw my
face, his expression relaxed, but I didn’t know why. He reached for
something behind his back and I panicked.

“Keep ‘em where I can see ‘em!” I said, aiming my
pistol at him.

“You’re not gonna’ shoot us, Lewis,” he said,
straightening his suit. “Why don’t you check my buddy’s
wallet?”

I stepped behind the man I cuffed, so the other
couldn’t see my arm moving to the dresser drawer and without
looking, I took out my own cuffs.

“Get back-to-back,” I said, but neither of them
moved. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I felt justified. So I
smacked the butt of my pistol on the cuffed man’s head. Not as hard
as I could, but hard enough to make him fall to his knees.

“How ‘bout now?” I said, to his buddy.

The cuffed guy slowly stood up and his buddy turned
his back to him. I swung around the guy I hit on the head and
inter-looped the cuffs so they were pinned together. I patted the
other one down and grabbed both of their wallets. When I opened the
wallet, there it was. The badges looked real enough; I’d seen many
of them in my career.

FBI.

My stomach dropped to my feet and my heart was now in
my throat. Even the slightly grogginess I felt was now completely
gone. I just committed assault against not one, but two federal
agents. I tried to hide the shock and up until this point, my door
was busted open and it looked like they were gonna kill my dog and
then me. The same two guys that had chased me — a disabled cop —
without identifying themselves as the FBI. My place was trashed, so
my assumptions were completely accurate and my actions acceptable,
up until now. Except for that part about stealing evidence from
Richie’s place and hitting the one agent over the head.

“You don’t want to do this, Lewis,” the tall one
said.

Assuming the place was bugged, I only had seconds to
get out. I called for Zero, who would’ve normally jumped into my
arms, but now came slowly limping out from under the bed. My heart
sank at the sight of him. Agents always did whatever they wanted. I
looked quickly in their pockets for a warrant and found
nothing.

“I don’t see a warrant here,” I said, letting them
know I knew procedure.

“The door was busted open when we got here.”

“Sure it was,” I said, my voice full of cynicism.

“That box doesn’t belong to you and you’re going to
jail for interfering with a federal investigation! And you can tack
assault on to that now!” one of them said.

It was an intimidation tactic. Neither of them had
FBI vests on and neither of them immediately disclosed they were
with the FBI. They weren’t on an official investigation. I knew the
box didn’t belong to them and nothing they said was going to
distract me. They came here for one reason: leverage. Even if all
they could find was my dog. I grabbed all the extra rounds for both
guns from under the sink and, with my broken dog and my broken
knee, I headed to Lolita’s place. And all I could think about was
how screwed I was.

When I reached Lolita’s, I went to the third floor,
grateful her building had elevators and knocked on the door, hoping
she was home. When she opened the door, she was wearing a white
see-through teddy, like she was expecting a customer.

“Kegger,” she said, surprised to see me.

The teddy was distracting. She didn’t even try to
hide it, just letting the door swing all the way open. For a
second, I’d forgotten why I was there and then the dog in my arm
reminded me.

“You never come to my place.”

This wasn’t true. I just hadn’t been to her place
since my knee was blown out. I’d been here plenty of times before
that.

“Lolita, I need a favor.” I watched her expression
change as she became aware I wasn’t visiting.

“I need you to watch Zero for a couple of days and I
need you to stay away from my place. There are a few people hanging
around that don’t really like me right now.”

“Keg, you know I can’t have dogs here.”

“It’s just this one time and besides, for some reason
he doesn’t bark.” I put him down on the floor to limp and look as
pathetic as possible and it worked.

“Awww, poor puppy,” she said.

“He also needs a vet. I’ll pay you back.”

Trying not to notice how nice she smelled and how
good she looked in the lace teddy, I kissed her cheek and left
muttering a few heartfelt thank-yous.

WHEN I GOT TO AARON’S, he was excited and relieved
when he saw me.

“Everything’s ready. We’re taking off in two hours,”
he said, as he let me in the back door of the shop. I sat myself
down on a stool as he bolted the door. Two hours seemed too long.
Surely they would show up here.

Aaron was a good man and I couldn’t take him down
with me in what I thought was a single stupid act or two.

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea that you join
me, Aaron.”

“Don’t give me the little-brother lecture, ‘cuz I’m
pretty sure you need me more than I need you.”

I didn’t feel like arguing, but I had to tell him the
truth. I agreed privately to myself that I needed his help, but I
couldn’t make him an accessory.

“There were two guys waiting for me at my place.”

His attention then turned into an expression I hadn’t
seen before. I think it was somewhere between genuine concern and
fear. I could only imagine what was passing through his mind.

“I’m pretty sure I just committed a felony.”

“Expand on that,” he said calmly.

“Assault with a deadly weapon against a federal
agent.”

“Over Kye?”

“No, over my dog. Kye wasn’t there.”

This didn’t make him laugh. His expression didn’t
change at all.

“And the dog is?”

“Safe.”

“And the federal agent?”

“Left handcuffed to his partner with both of their
guns removed and thrown on my dresser. I hit one over the head with
the butt of my twenty-two, which was loaded, but that was before I
knew he was an agent. Oh and the box is evidence, I should have
turned over to the police, the minute I found it, second-degree
felony, maybe a misdemeanor.”

“That it?” he said.

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Well, I thought it was serious. You said, ‘assault’
and I realize this affects your moral compass, but I do have two
felonies and I think you are overreacting.”

My expression now transformed into a frown instead of
panic. This wasn’t what I expected to hear. I took in the
information and he raised his eyebrows and shoulders at me.
Mentally, I started making a list of things I needed to ask him. I
shook my head, thinking it was a misunderstanding, or maybe he was
at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or I was hoping that. I was
pretty sure, if he had a felony, he wasn’t in prison long. He was
too young.

“I asked you if there was anything else-”

“You weren’t specific,” he said.

And that was that. My best friend was a convicted
felon and I was a good cop turned bad over a Chihuahua, a childhood
friend and a stupid box. At first, I did everything by the book.
And now, I was leaving federal agents handcuffed to each other and
running like a thief all because of the evidence I’d removed from
Richie’s place. I started questioned everything I’d done in the
last 24 hours.

I noticed there was something was different about
Aaron. I expected more alarm or panic from him, but his face was
stoic, as if he was beyond the situation. He pulled out a very old
bottle of gin from the safe and poured two full glasses for us and
made a call.

“Jared, change the flight plan,” he said, “we need to
leave as soon as possible. Tell Ian to pick us up now.”

I’d never heard Aaron use these names before and now
I was happy to have the gin. I wasn’t about to ask him questions
because right now, he was my way out. And I couldn’t believe I was
actually going to run from the FBI.

“We’ll be in the air soon,” he said.

The pain in my knee was reaching into my thigh again
and I was sure my expression said everything that I didn’t. So I
picked up the glass, clinked it against his and downed it. Then I
poured myself another regretting everything I’d done in the last
twenty-four hours.

In less than twenty minutes an Escalade pulled in
front of the shop. It was Ian. Ian looked military: lots of muscle,
really short haircut and an expressionless face. He greeted Aaron
as “Mr. Stanisky,” and I soon found out that Jared was the pilot.
We boarded the plane and although I was relieved to now be headed
to Arizona, I ran everything over in my head. What made me keep the
box? Why didn’t I turn it over to evidence? It had to be because of
the way Richie was killed. As the plane ascended, I decided to
leave the worry behind me, along with the guilt and the unequivocal
certainty that I would be in jail upon our return.

WHEN WE GOT TO ARIZONA, we first flew around the
west rim of the canyon. The rock formations were amazing. Goliath.
For an hour, we watched the terrain. I’d seen the canyon when I was
in my twenties and had always wanted to see it again. It was
breathtaking. The huge fissure with is beautiful terrace walls was
just profound. Layers upon layers of ancient rock exposed over
millions of years and the Colorado River running through it. The
view and the gin almost made me forget why I was even it the
plane.

Aaron started to talk to me through the headphones we
had on. The engine was so loud that, without them, you couldn’t
hear a thing.

“You know the Pueblo tribes in this area say their
ancestors lived here. They were cliff dwellers. They believed they
came from an old world into a new world through a sacred place that
is located in the canyon. They had a legend that when a blue star
fell, that it marked the purification of the Earth and only their
people and the animals would be saved. It’s said that they held the
balance of the world in the way that they lived.”

“What happened to the old world?” I said.

“It was covered in ice and they were forced to leave.
But the skeleton man who led them from the third world to the
fourth world told them to watch for their lost white brothers,” he
was smiling now.

“What’s so amazing about that?”

“It was about 1200 A.D.”

Okay, I guess that was interesting, considering the
white man hadn’t discovered America yet.

“You should start a tour,” I said, now smiling.

“You know what else? They were the first Pueblo
people to bind their infant’s heads with wood to shape them into
cones.”

Now he was creeping me out. As if the tiny plane
wasn’t enough. And now that I was creeped out, I started to worry.
I had a good idea of the not-so-friendly terrain we were headed for
and I suddenly became aware of how badly I’d planned this. I
brought no food, no water and was hoping that Aaron thought of
these things.

I looked around the small plane and noticed two large
duffel bags. This made me feel a little better. The plane itself
wasn’t one of those four-seater Mooneys that you could feel every
little bump in and not the kind you could describe as a
puddle-jumper, but it was small enough.

We were doing around 160 miles an hour and I was
starting to get that feeling of being too closed in. Aaron, of
course, was enjoying himself immensely.

“Where exactly are we headed?”

“Southwest of the north rim, about thirty miles from
Phantom Ranch,” he answered.

After a few more minutes, Aaron motioned to me that
we were right over the spot and the airplane descended enough to
fly below the radar. He then grabbed one of the duffel bags and
pulled it into the cockpit.

Looking out the window, I noticed three tiny white
dots deep in the middle of the y-crevice in the canyon below
us.