Vengeance: A Reece Culver Thriller - Book 1 (9 page)

Chapter Twenty

I
n a small
room near the rear of his casino Sam Shanks was counting twenty-dollar bills. The table was covered on one end with paper sacks of money and on the other with neat stacks of bills. Owen Roberts sat across from Shanks, wrapping a stack of five-dollar bills in a rubber band. Michael Zimeratti was at a desk in the corner of the room in a cream-colored suit, working numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, and with his dark complexion he looked the part of a mob money manager. He had the kind of complex facial structure that was handsome from one angle and devious from another.

“You got any idea what Blackwell did with Rocco?” Shanks asked.

“Whatever he did I can assure you it wasn’t good. I seen him stuffing something that could have been a body into the back of the van the other morning,” Owen said, looking up from his stack of money.

“That fucking psychopath better get a handle on himself or he’ll screw things up here just like he did back in St. Louis,” Shanks said, slamming his fist against the tabletop. “Michael, you got any idea what that cock sucker did with our dealer?”

“I saw him hosing out the back of the van last night, so I’d guess your dealer made a mess.”

*

Vinton Blackwell drove into the casino property, still thinking about his call from Crystal earlier in the day. He’d always suspected Owen Roberts of being a problem, and he wondered why Shanks had gone to such trouble to keep him around. Blackwell pulled up behind the casino and spotted the cars of Shanks and Zimeratti parked alongside the white Ford van. He walked in the back door and down the hallway toward the big room where the bar was located. Vinton heard voices coming from the money counting room and stopped short. He patted the inside right pocket of his suit coat, confirming he’d brought along his favorite firearm. He could hear Shanks, Roberts, and Zimeratti on the other side of the door talking loudly. As the door opened, he jumped back against the wall and froze.

Michael Zimeratti walked out of the counting room, still looking back toward the occupants inside, and never noticed the large man standing in the dim light a few feet behind him. Zimeratti pulled the door closed and walked down the hall.

Vinton Blackwell watched Zimeratti walk away and waited, still listening to the voices emanating from behind the closed door. He could hear Owen Roberts talking trash about him to their boss, Sam Shanks. Blackwell felt rage bubbling up beneath his skin. He had an impulse to pull his gun and barge into the room. Owen was telling Shanks about what a great guy the dealer Rocco was. “The problems aren’t with the people we have working the tables. The problems are with Vinton Blackwell. He’s a goddamned psychopath.”

That was enough. Blackwell squeezed the doorknob in his hand and swung the door open, almost tearing it loose of its hinges. Sam Shanks, who was seated on the opposite side of the table, looked stunned. Blackwell began shouting. “So, here you are taking shit about me with this scum-sucking bastard. That’s just great, Shanks. I guess you might like to know Roberts here
has been talking to the FBI. In fact, he’s been working for them all along as their informant.”

*

Owen looked at Shanks, who was snarling at him like a jackal. Owen pulled an eight-inch filet knife from his waist and lunged at Blackwell, catching him off guard. Shoving inside the killer’s large black handgun, he brought the filet knife to Blackwell’s neck.

Shanks yelled, “Stop!” but neither man did. Owen had his right hand on Blackwell’s gun, trying to keep it out of his face. He pressed into Blackwell’s throat and yelled, “Drop the gun or I’ll slit you like a fucking cantaloupe.”

Blackwell abruptly stopped resisting and tossed his gun onto the money-covered table in front of them. A small trickle of blood seeped from the half-inch slit in the middle of Blackwell’s throat.

“You’ve been trying to ruin me your whole life, Blackwell,” Owen yelled. “It was you that talked me into borrowing money from Sam up in St. Louis. It was you that got me in debt so bad that I couldn’t afford to gamble anymore.” Owen pulled Blackwell’s hand down toward his side while still holding the knife to his neck. He twisted the man’s wrist, ensuring he had control. Blood from the slit in Vinton Blackwell’s neck stained the collar of his white dress shirt.

“You ruined my life, kidnapped my wife Tracey, and caused my children to be put into orphanages,” Owen said, shaking his right hand like he might slit Blackwell’s throat ear to ear at any minute.

“Get a hold of yourself, Owen. It’s not going to do you any good to murder Vinton. If you are a snitch for the FBI, you won’t last long,” Shanks said.

*

Michael Zimeratti had heard Owen shouting from the counting room. He went behind the long wooden bar and pulled the sawed-off twelve gauge shotgun from the bungee cords that held it in position next to the cash register. Zimeratti pumped the stock, racking a slug into the chamber of the Remington 870, and walked down the hallway toward the commotion. He saw Owen’s back facing the open doorway and figured it was a knife he was holding to Vinton’s neck.

“You’ve gone too far, Blackwell. Now it’s my turn. I can’t wait to feel your blood on my hands,” Owen yelled.

Zimeratti leveled the gun at Owen’s spine and took a step forward, stabbing him with the snout of the shotgun’s barrel.

“Drop the knife, Owen. This little episode is over,” Zimeratti said calmly. Owen’s mouth opened with a gasp, and the bloodlust fled from his face. Zimeratti looked down at Sam Shanks and gave him a wink. Shanks stood from the table and produced a small silver-single shot pistol from his vest.

“Do what Michael says, Owen. Drop the knife.”

Chapter Twenty-One

R
eece Culver sat
at a cold stainless steel table staring into a two-way mirror. He’d been in an interview room before, but he didn’t know where he was on this particular day. His head was throbbing, and when he looked down at the date window of his watch he wondered how he’d gotten from sniffing a urine-soaked floor on Wednesday to sitting in somebody’s interrogation room on Friday. It didn’t make sense.
What the hell is going on?

The door sprang open and two men dressed in dark blue suits with police shields clipped to their lapels stepped in.

“Culver, you’re awake. You feel like filling us in on what you’ve been up to?” One of the men asked in a deep raspy voice. He was short with deep-set black eyes, and a square chin. Reece, eyeing his grey buzz cut, wondered if they’d loosened the height requirements the day this guy had signed up to be a cop. Isley, he read on the badge.

Reece kept silent. He wasn’t going to say a word until they told him where he was and why his right hand was cuffed to the stainless steel chair his butt occupied. The tall cop, equally ugly, had a dent in the left side of his head that made his thick brown hair set funny on his noggin. He took a seat in front of Reece. This one was Leftwich.

“Culver, I brought you some coffee. You do like coffee, don’t you?”

This must be the guy who was to play the good cop.

“Let’s see, Reece Culver, age thirty-two, out of Denver, Colorado. You’re a licensed private investigator in three states, this being one of them.”

Reece stared straight ahead. His head felt funny and specks of memory were returning. He remembered the smell of someone leaning over him. He remembered her perfume.
Had he been in a hospital
? He tried to think back, then thought of his client Crystal and wondered if she had been at the abandoned house. He tried to remember the scent of the perfume. Was it the same citrus smell he’d enjoyed the night she’d visited his apartment? He wasn’t sure. Reece thought about the stranger he’d seen and remembered wondering if it was a man or woman.

“You got a problem with the homeless or something?” the short cop yelled, pulling him back to reality.

Reece glanced down at his watch and wondered why it was strapped onto his left wrist upside down. In the glass bezel he saw a reflection of his image.
Is that a bandage?

“Did one of you do this to me?” he blurted out, pointing toward the bloodstained bandage.

With a long bang Leftwich hit the table closed-fisted in front of Reece.

“Are you some kind of funny guy? You know goddamned well what went down in that house, Culver. I got a dead guy in my morgue with two slugs in his chest from that fancy gun of yours. You got fresh residue all over, and you’re asking stupid questions?”

“Why don’t you start by telling us why you went to the house in the first place?” Isley asked.

Reece looked toward the door. Maybe it might be a good time to lawyer up.

“You got some kind of drug habit or something we need to know about? That dump we found you in is good for only one thing,” Leftwich said, sounding aggravated. Isley advanced toward him and said, “You want to tell us what happened, or should we just charge you with murder and wait until the DA has time to sort this out?”

“Murder? What are you talking about? I want a lawyer and my phone call,” Reece said in a low voice.

The two cops exchanged a look. Leftwich got up from his seat, went over to the door, and pounded. A uniformed St. Louis police officer appeared. Reece looked up at the man. He was older with a full head of white hair and a kind face. His nametag read “Felps.”

“Let’s lock this one back up. Let him sleep off whatever he’s on. We’ll start this again in the morning.”

Reece stared at the two cops who’d been interrogating him. They were hard over sticking him with the murder, but he had no idea who had been killed.

“I’d like my phone call and a lawyer,” he repeated.

“We’ll get you a call, and we’ll get the public defender for you, but I doubt he’ll show up until tomorrow morning.”

Officer Felps un-cuffed Reece from the table and led him down a hall lined with brown industrial tile. Up ahead he saw a single black phone that looked like it had been put in service fifty years before. As Reece stopped before it, he tried to remember Haisley’s phone number. His head started to throb again, and his mind was blank except for the name “Felps.”
Why does that name stick out?

Reece’s index finger turned the rotary dial of the phone, dialing area code 918 for Tulsa. Then the rest came to him, and he dialed Haisley’s home phone number. Reece listened to the phone ring four times and go to voicemail.

“Haisley, it’s Reece Culver. I’m locked up in some St. Louis precinct. I was at the old Roberts house looking for clues. Someone hit me in the head. While I was unconscious, I’m guessing someone used my gun to commit a murder. I need your help,” Reece said, hoping Haisley would call back before he spent much more time in jail.

He’d just hung up the phone when he saw a young man dressed in a brown sports coat, dress pants, and reddish brown penny loafers. This guy walked like he was going somewhere.

Reece felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see Officer Felps.

“I need you to come in here and take a seat, Mr. Culver,” he said, encouraging him into a small room with a single wooden table and four chairs. The link came to him. This guy Felps had worked with his dad back in the early nineties. That would explain his white hair.

“Hey, Felps, do you remember my dad, Al Culver?” he asked hoping he’d say yes. Felps remained silent as he clasped the handcuffs to the leg of the wood table.

“Every one of you guys got a story,” he said, then turned and left the room. Reece wanted to go after him, but he would need to take the table with him.

He sat staring at the same tiled walls that he’d seen earlier in the interrogation room. He reached up toward the knot on the side of his head with his left hand and felt a solid bump. He pushed on it and pain shot through his temple. Reece searched his memory, wondering where he’d been the day before. He was almost sure that he’d spent the night in a hospital bed. He remembered a cute, nice-smelling nurse but little else. It was weird. He’d had dreams and fantasies about woman, but this was too real for that, yet he had no other solid memories other than lying on the floor in the Roberts house.

Reece rubbed his wrists and noticed the red grooves the steel had made upon his reddened skin. The door swung open, and someone began talking in a fast high-pitched voice.

“Mr. Culver, I’m your state-appointed attorney, Jed Harris.”

Reece sized up his young face, wondering how many weeks it had been since he’d gotten his law degree. The attorney took a seat, setting down a brand-new leather briefcase that matched his loafers.

“Tell me about the events leading up to the homicide, Mr. Culver. What took you to the house on Calvin Avenue the evening of Wednesday, January 26?”

Reece stared at the kid with his brown crew cut, and red cheeks wondering if he was old enough to vote.

“Listen, kid. What’s your name? Jed? Is that short for something?” he asked sarcastically. His head hurt. He was sleep deprived, and he was tired of playing games. Reece had a feeling his rights had been violated and he was due to be released.

“Cut the crap and tell me your story, Culver. That is, if you want my help. They got you up on murder charges.”

Reece leaned forward, staring through the kid. “What they got me up on is a bunch of lies.”

“Not according to them. They got a dead man in the morgue with two bullets in him from your gun. That’s enough to put you away for a long time, Mr. Culver.”

“The only problem with that story is this head wound here, and the fact I have no memory after I was hit with something last Wednesday night. The other problem is, I’m a licensed private investigator in this state and I have certain rights…” he said, then lost his train of thought. Reece sat silent and then the rest came back to him. “And as far as I can tell, my rights have been violated.”

“What do you mean, violated?”

“I haven’t been mirandized,” Reece said.

“You don’t remember meeting with me in the hospital on Thursday morning?” the attorney asked, looking puzzled.

“The only thing I remember is being hassled by those two pricks a few minutes ago.”