Authors: John Shirley
Behind the building was a parking lot. There were several limos in it, along with a gold colored SUV that probably belonged to some minor rapper who was into being a Player, several shiny, low slung Porsches and Jaguars, and one late model Escalade. He saw no beaters, no low-income cars, which told him that the employers had to park somewhere else. There was a sign that said Private Parking Only. It didn’’t say parking for what. A chubby cheeked parking attendant in a black watch cap and overcoat was watching something pink and squirmy on a miniature TV in a little parking lot kiosk. Chances were the parking lot attendant wasn’t going to look up from Bikini Bimbos unless another car drove in.
Wolfe turned, walked down the alley close to the back wall of the building. His boots crunched loudly in gravel as he walked toward a patch of light at a back door. Someone was standing there, smoking a cigarette, keeping the door open enough so they could get back in. Which meant the door locked if it closed and this guy didn’t have a key. Somebody low-level.
Wolfe glanced up, didn’t see the sentries looking down. He walked around the back door as if he were just cutting through the alley—then stopped, staring in sudden recognition at the man in the backdoor. And the man stared back at him with the same mild shock.
It was Kurt O’Malley, an Irish-German guy from the old ‘hood. They’d grown up near each other; they’d shared a six pack or two and double dated, occasionally, just before Wolfe enlisted in the Army.
“Kurt? That you?”
O’Malley was wearing a white jacket, white pants. He was a gangly man with a stubby nose, rusty colored hair and a nicely trimmed goatee. He apparently worked as a bus boy at the casino.
He gawked at Wolfe. “Man, I thought you was in prison!”
“Was. Just a year—Leavenworth. I was framed.”
“Hey man,
everybody
in prison was framed.” O’Malley laughed.
Wolfe chose not to argue. “Listen, Kurt—I need work. I heard in this place you’re working at here, pretty much everybody has a prison record.”
“The Hell they do!” He sniffed, wiped his nose with a sleeve. “Okay, a lot of guys do. But it’s not like it’s gotta be on your resume, fuh Chris’sakes. You got to pay Santiago to introduce you to the bosses, and maybe they’ll hire you if they need somebody...and maybe they won’t.”
“Who’s Santiago?”
“Kitchen supervisor. You gotta grease his palm and maybe he’ll put you up for a job and maybe not. I borrowed a hundred bucks from my Pop to pay him. This dump gets me more cash than a regular dive though.”
“Not like they give you benefits.”
“You can drink left over booze and eat leftover food and they pay you in cash. Sometimes you can find a poker chip on the floor, cash it in. You really on the down and outs, huh?”
“Yeah, man.”
O’Malley tossed his cigarette butt into the alley. “You come back tomorrow, and I’ll...”
“I’ll need that talk with Santiago tonight, man. Just let me in, I’ll find him.”
“Can’t do that.” O’Malley started to close the door. “So long.”
“You want to smoke a joint, Kurt?”
The door didn’t quite close. O’Malley stuck his nose out again, and glanced up and down the alley “Never could get you to indulge. So you’re into it now huh?” O’Malley looked over his shoulder. “Uh—sure. Just a sec.” He pulled a mop from where it leaned against the wall inside, used the handle to block the door open. “Gotta make this quick! Just a couple of hits...”
Just one hit. An uppercut to the chin.
O’Malley was out cold. The Delta Force training was still there in Wolfe’s hands. Wolfe caught the slumping man, dragged him inside. The warmth of the building’s back hallway rolled over him as he looked around. No one in the hall but a lot of clackety-clack came from the kitchen down the hall, along with shouts for orders, cooks grumbling. Wolfe could smell food cooking, and coffee.
He dragged O’Malley to a utility closet, opened it, shoved him in with the cleaning products. He pulled off O’Malley’s coat and belt, used the belt to tie the busboy’s hands behind him, then shoved an oily rag into his mouth. “Sorry, Kurt,” Wolfe muttered. “I’ll try and remember to let you go when I head out...”
Wolfe took off his own coat, put it in his pack, and put on O’Malley’s white coat. He found an employee’s men’s room, got his shaving stuff out of his pack, shaved and cleaned up as well as he could. He hurried out of the bathroom, and went into the kitchen trying to look busy and purposeful. Everyone was too busy to look him over much; he figured if they noticed him carrying a backpack over one shoulder, they’d figure he was on his way to clock out.
#
It was the Oxycodone that did it: made Verrick talkative, made him feel something like friendly warmth toward the girl. The back pain got Verrick the Oxy prescription but he tried not to take it too often. Trouble was, “not too often” was getting more and more often.
“Yeah it got ugly in Mali, and uglier in Somalia,” Verrick was saying. He looked up at the red silk canopy over the king-sized bed. The lights were dialed down to half so it was dim but not dark. He smelled of chlorine from the hot tub, which still bubbled over on the other side of the room. He was lying on his side, naked, head propped on one hand. Rose had put on her sheer stuff and was kneeling on the white rug in front of the coffee table, getting high. He could hear the sound of the casino downstairs, coming through the curtained window; croupiers calling numbers, the merged murmur of a crowd. Sometimes there were cocktail parties in this big room for visiting Club bosses. They could open the curtains, and watch the action down on the main floor. If he got up and threw open the curtains he’d be visible from the roulette table and the high stakes poker table and the blackjack table—framed in that window stark naked. That’d throw some gamblers off their game. He chuckled at the thought, and went on, “And one day I just got tired of snipers trying to shoot me in the gullet. I mean, I was risking getting capped for what, for an officer’s pension, and I said
Fuck this, I’m gonna change things up
. I can quit this and go to work for Blume. Right after that General Van Ness and I got smashed on his Scotch when I was on leave in Algiers, and he tells me about an outfit called Purity. So it all came together.”
“Purity
is an organization, Roger?” she asked, as she tapped a powder from a small canister onto the mirrored table.
“That’s...kind of a
lodge
, you might say.”
“Like the Moose Club?”
He laughed. “Kinda! But real secret. And this one is gonna change the world.”
“How?”
How?
That was definitely something he wasn’t going to tell her. He wondered if maybe she’d been leading him into talking about this while he was stoned—maybe she was a federal agent?
No. Couldn’t be.
But he should have her capped anyway just to make sure. Maybe later tonight. Shame...but he was getting tired of her anyway.
He looked at her, checking her out through the rose and blue lingerie; her delicate fingers industriously chopping the china white she liked to snort. He’d told her he wouldn’t get into that stuff, but here he was, taking Oxycodone, not that much different. He’d swallowed some Oxy and one other drug...
He was about to put the Viagra to good use when he noticed a bus boy pushing a cart in through the door.
“What the fuck!” Rose said blearily, losing the ladylike diction she put on for customers. “What’s he doin’ in here?”
“Door’ supposed to be locked,” Verrick muttered, instinctively pulling a purple satin sheet to cover his nakedness. “How’d the hell you get in? Get outta here...’
“Oh sorry, sir,” said the busboy. He didn’t sound very damn sincere. With the drug and the dimness it was hard to see the guy’s face. Verrick blurrily noted that there was a small backpack on the lower shelf of the cart.
“We don’t need anything bussed out of here,” Rose said.
“Might need Verrick bussed out of here,” the busboy said, closing the door behind him—and pulling a small pistol from the pocket of his white coat.
“Shit,” Verrick said. His own .25 backup pistol was in his pants, which were lying on the floor next to the hot tub.
Getting sloppy. That’s what the Oxy does to you, you fool! Shoulda had a bodyguard in the hall.
He didn’t like the bodyguards knowing his private business, though...
“How much are they paying you?” Verrick asked. “You seem like a good man to have around. Tell you what. You could make twice as much working for me.”
“Already worked for you,” the busboy said, reaching over with one hand to dial up the light. He did it without looking away from Verrick; without that gun muzzle wavering. Rose moaned when he did that, and scrambled back from the glass coffee table.
“Wolfe!” Verrick burst out.
“That’s right, Major.”
Verrick looked at his trousers across the room. He tried to figure out how he’d get to them—and that pistol. “Hey—you’re going to shoot me, at least let me put my pants on. Rose—hand me my trousers.”
Rose stirred...
“No, uh uh, you make a move, pretty lady, and I’ll put a bullet in you,” Wolfe said.
Rose froze.
“How’d you get in?” Verrick said, stalling. Pretty sure that Wolfe was here to shoot him. Maybe someone would realize Wolfe had gotten in...
“Door lock’s electronic,” Wolfe said genially. “I came equipped for that. Back door, though—that’s an old fashioned lock. So I had to knock some fool out.”
“And you took his place? Resourceful. That offer to work for me still goes.”
Wolfe’s soft laughter was bitter. “Oh, I’ll
do
something for you, Verrick. You straighten out my life and I very deliberately
won’t
put a bullet through each of your knees. And I won’t break your spine just above your tailbone. And, I won’t drop a dime and tell every fucking reporter in the country what a thieving, treasonous scumbag you are.”
So Wolfe wasn’t definitely planning to kill him? That emboldened Verrick. “You already tried smearing me in military court. You sent some letters out from that prison too.”
“They didn’t get anywhere, way I heard it. Somebody intercepted them.”
“That’s right. I should’ve...”
“Should’ve what? Had me killed,Verrick? I expected you would. Maybe you could still do it if I decide to leave you alive today. Only you’d have to find me. And you won’t. You won’t find me. But I can always find
you.
You’re a public figure, Major Verrick! You can pile on the bodyguards but it won’t help you—I can find you. You know I can. I’ll either kill you—or I’ll take the dirt I’ve got on you and broadcast it everywhere.”
“If you had any proof of anything, you’d have done that already, soon as you got out of jail.”
Wolfe hesitated—and Verrick saw a troubled flicker in the man’s eyes. So Wolfe was bluffing about having anything on him the press could use.
“I can still take you down, Verrick,” Wolfe persisted. “I promise you. One way or another. But I’m giving you a chance. If you want me outta your life, you clear my name—and I figure you can do it without going down yourself. There was Captain Callahan...”
Rafe Callahan. Army Captain under Verrick’s command, and Verrick’s partner in heisting the warlord payoff money in Somalia. Callahan was dead now. Verrick had him killed, made it look like an al Qaeda car bomb. “How am I supposed to use Callahan to cover my ass?” Verrick asked. “Am I supposed to say he did it all alone?”
“That’s the concept. He’s dead so no harm done if you lay it all on him. You make a public statement, say you got new information, say Callahan stole the money and not al Qaeda. Tell the courts you realized I was right about the money being stolen—I’ll say you weren’t in on it after all. That I was wrong, when I accused you, it was all Callahan. They reverse my discharge, they give me my pension back. My name is cleared. You never hear from me again.”
“So that’s the deal? Okay—what the hell. Sure. Why not? Maybe it’ll clear things up for both of us.”
Wolfe stared at him. Then he snorted. “Look at you!” He shook his head. “No.” Wolfe shook his head. “Nah. I can see it in your face. You’ll never do it. You think it’ll be easier to kill me. You’re wrong about that, Verrick.” Wolfe tilted his head to one side, thinking it out. “Maybe I need to just take you out. At least I can get that much satisfaction....”
Wolfe raised the gun, aimed—Verrick prepared to jump off the bed...
The door burst open behind Wolfe.
It pushed him off balance and he fired the .38 but the bullet went wide, cracking into the headboard.
Rose screamed.
Verrick threw himself off the end of the bed, rolled, grabbed for his pants and his .25...
“There he is!” Honker’s deep voice from the hall.
Verrick looked up to see Wolfe turning to face the big bouncer standing in the doorway—Honker with a billy club in his hand.
Honker looked at Wolfe’s gun—then ducked to one side.
Verrick resumed digging through his trousers, pulling out the .25 caliber pistol...
“Look out, boss!” Luke Kelly was there, suddenly, in the doorway—a muscular but rangy man in a black limo chauffeur’s uniform, he was Verrick’s bodyguard and driver. Somebody must’ve warned him there was trouble in the casino. Good man!