KNIGHT'S REPORTS: 3 Book Set (4 page)

Chapter
5

Dead Man's Bluf
f?

I make it back to Smokey’s Marina just as the EMS van is leaving and Tamara White Cloud is opening her door to get back into her car. The small crowd of six or eight people have dispersed, and the only other person there is Lieutenant Legend. She’s standing next to Tamara with her back to me.

I’m trotting
toward them, out of breath. But neither woman notices me. With the exception of Marine Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) School, I’d never run this far with my hands secured behind my back. The negative affect it has on balance and stamina surprises me.

Just as I’m thinking there’s no need to rush — the silver Chevy isn’t anywhere in sight and neither is the guy with the rifle — I notice the silenced muzzle of an assault rifle protruding from the side of the marina.

Awkwardly, I sprint at the two women.

“No!” I shout. “Get down!”

The lady cop turns, drawing her Glock 22 .40 cal.  My parole officer now has one foot inside her car.

I body slam Lt. Legend into Tamara White Cloud.

The lieutenant’s handgun goes flying and Tamara’s purse spills out just as the driver-side window shatters. Glass rains over us, and I know the window breaking is not from my assault, but from a bullet.

I’m lying across the lieutenant sideways, and she gives me an elbow thrust to the top of my chest as she gets up. Without a means to block it, I take the full force of her attack, and it knocks the air from my lungs.

With a couple of gasps, I find the oxygen to say, “Wasn’t me! Shooter at the corner of the building!”

My warning comes too late. As Lt. Legend is reaching for her gun on the gravel, she takes a bullet in the back.

“Damn it!” I say and stumble up, my hands still behind me.

Tamara White Cloud has slipped away and is heading across the parking lot in the opposite direction from the marina.

“Tamara, get back here. Get down!”

Again, too late. She runs into the shrubs that separate the lot from the street and right into the arms of the other assailant.

I strain to hear sirens, but there are none. Where are the damn cops when you need them?

I turn clumsily. I want to go to the downed cop, but she can’t be a priority, now. She’s not moving and quite possibly dead. I need to get to Tamara, but with hands zipped behind my back and a shooter behind me in the opposite direction, I’m unsure of how.

Lt. Legend starts to move. A silenced bullet kicks up rocks in the gravel lot only a few inches from her head. It’s a warning shot. From the short range with a nearly stationary target, a ten-year-old with a slingshot could have easily hit her.

I have
no hope but to attempt a stalling bluff. The cops are going to be back any second, I’m sure of it — and if these guys have any sense at all, they should realize that too.

I stand and glare at the shooter, sixty feet away.
"If you let them both go now,” I tell him, “I won't kill you."

Both
assassins laugh. They have the same laugh, and they’re both short and stocky.

"He's wasting our time. Kill 'em!"
says the guy holding Tamara. “We got her alive — that’s a double bonus.”

The shooter says, “You’re a dead man.”

As foolhardy as it may seem, my only chance is that I might somehow defeat them with a kamikaze attack. This little plan depends on confidence — but not mine. I must rely purely on luck. It’s the
overconfidence
of our attackers that I’m counting on to better my overwhelmingly dismal odds: their overconfidence in easily staving off the attack of an unarmed —
double entendre intended
— seemingly defenseless man.

I begin a swift
walk toward the shooter whose aim is shifting from Lt. Legend to me, my eyes on the guy’s trigger finger.

Time seems to slow.

The sniper takes quick aim.

Now forty feet away, I see he’s not wasting a second for careful placement of the round that should kill me. He’s aiming center of mass — dead center of my chest.

He’s squeezing the trigger, I can feel it — I see it.

I
twist sideways like a bullfighter stepping away from the bull, as the sniper fires. The bullet misses my chest by what couldn’t be more than a millimeter.

He’s surprised but quickly adjusts.

Now I’m twenty feet away.

He squeezes off another hasty shot, as I zig
in the other direction.

The bullet misses again.
I assess my target.

At ten feet, I zag
away. The guy’s so flustered, he misses a third time.

Now
I’m on him, and I kick the rifle up and out of his hand as it discharges a fourth time, the bullet going wild.

My next move is quick, but couldn’t be more carefully planned. I’m just glad he’s not very tall — I haven’t done my stretches.

I kick him once more, this time under the jaw.

T
he guy's head snaps up and back, unnaturally — the base of his skull separating from the top of his vertebrae, his neck breaking in a loud crack.

No reason to check, I’ve heard that sound before. The assailant is either dead or paralyzed.

I turn toward Tamara. Number two is bringing her closer, toward her car. I’m thinking he’s coming to finish me off and check on his partner. They must be a close team, maybe brothers. If they were only after the money, the survivor would have left on his own.

The second guy and Tamara are now about seventy-five feet away.

She’s lucky he hasn’t killed her already, if that’s what they were here to do. Maybe it’s a
kidnap-if-you-can-for-a- bonus, kill-if-you-can’t
. Regardless, if given a chance, I’m sure he’ll use her as a hostage and a shield.

But Tamara surprises me, while surprising number two even more. She stomps her right high hee
l into the top of the guy's foot and then twists out of his grasp.

I’m sprinting at the second attacker now.

He has a small handgun, and he’s bringing it to bear on Tamara as she stumbles away.

She kicks her remaining shoe off and runs barefooted back across the parking lot toward the marina restaurant.

Ah-h-h!
I shout to divert the assailant’s attention.

Number two makes a slight adjustment, as Tamara rushes past Lt. Legend and then me.

The Lieutenant struggles to get up, her own handgun a good six feet from where she’s now kneeling.

The second assassin brings his gun to bear on me.

I have one thing going for me; number two saw what happened to his buddy, and he’s probably a bit shaken up. I seem to have that effect on folks.

He fires his Kimber Compact .45 ACP, a loud report compared to the silenced rifle.

This time he gets me, the bullet grazing my left shoulder.

The guy’s definitely afraid of me — he’s moved to the back bumper of Tamara’s car. A split second separates his second shot from the first.

But I’m leaping to the side, behind the front end of Tamara’s car when the gun fires. That round cleanly misses me.

I’m ducked down. Figuring t
he assassin will shift to the other side of the car, I move swiftly back around to where he’d been.

When the assassin turns,
I’m standing fully beside him at the back of the car.

In the next second, before he turns the pistol back to me, the short stocky man
finds my foot in his face.

The bridge of his nose breaks,
and its sharp end has been driven into his brain.

They
didn’t call me “The Mule” in the Marines for just the
one
reason!

*   *   *

I went to Lt. Legend and knelt by her side. She was still trying to stand to get to her sidearm.

“You’ve been shot. The shooters are no longer a threat. You need to lie back down.”

Sirens blare.

“Help’s on its way, Lieutenant,” I assure her.

“Harper,” she said.

“What?”

“You can call me
Harper
. I figure you’ve probably earned it.” She collapsed to the side. Although an initial assessment told me her wound didn’t appear to be as bad as it could have been, I wished I could help her. But my hands were still zip-tied behind me.

Then I felt tugging at my wrists.

“And you can call me
Tamara
, E Z,” Tamara said from behind me. “You’ve definitely earned it.”

As Beautiful’s white Escalade pulled into the parking lot at the far end, I felt the zip tie give way, and my hands were free. Tamara stuck a serrated letter opener back into its sheath and returned it to her purse.

The small crowd had gathered, once again.

I tore off the bloodied left sleeve from my shirt, revealing the bullet wound, and I used the rag to press against the blood-seeping hole in Harper’s back.

“Does this mean we’re some kinda blood brothers?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it means. You just lie there quiet, or I won’t invite you to the family reunion.”

She didn’t obey. “Tamara, why they after you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had any trouble like this before.”

Tamara gathered her things that had been strewn out around the car door and placed them back in her purse. She picked up her cell phone and frowned at it.

“I’m late,” she said. “I pray you’ll be okay, Lieutenant. I know they’ll need me for a statement, and God knows what else. But I’m supposed to pick up my son from John Wayne International in five minutes.” She mustered a smile for me. “He’s a Marine, too.”

“Give him a
semper fi
.”

“I will. And I’ll tell him you saved my —” she said staring back at the phone. She pushed a button and held it to her ear.

Harper said, “I’m sorry, Tamara. You can’t leave until this is all sorted out. We’ll send a car to pick up your son.”

Two patrol cars finally hit the parking lot, sirens blaring. Three new cops got out of their cars, guns drawn.

“It’s okay,” Harper said. She flashed her badge at them. She’d lost enough blood to be light-headed, and she finally collapsed.

“Ambulance is on the way,” one of the cops said. “Where’re the perps?”

“Just two of them. This one’s dead,” I said pointing to the guy closest to us by the car. I nodded to the one with the silenced assault rifle next to the back of the marina. “Not sure about that one.”

One of the cops was already hovering over the one with the rifle. “Still a light pulse.”

An ambulance made the driveway as Tamara fell back into her car, her face blanched. I thought she might faint.

“Tamara, you okay?”

“I don’t know — no, I don’t think I am.”

An EMT took over for me, trying to keep the wound in Harper’s back plugged to slow the bleeding.

Another took me by the arm.

“Take care of her,” I said nodding to Harper. “Mine’s just a flesh wound.” I motioned to Tamara, as well. “I think Officer White Cloud needs your assistance as well.”

One of the female EMTs went to her.

“No, I’m not hurt,” she said. She gaped at me. “My son — he left a message. He’s in trouble. I think he might be ... dead.”

She passed out.

Chapter
6

Trouble to Go

Mission Hospital, Laguna Beach, 4:30 PM

A cute little black doctor named Dorothy Mead cleaned and dressed where the bullet grazed my left shoulder. I lay on the gurney as she drew the final of nine sutures.

I told her, “Just added another one to the old collection, Dot.”

She laughed. “Let’s hope this is the last.”

She seemed astonished at the other bullet and knife scars on my torso, touching them motherly.

“Don’t be too surprised if you see me in your bed again soon,” I said.

Her eyebrows raised. I couldn’t tell if she thought it’d be a good or bad thing.

She helped me to a sitting position, and I explained, “My body’s like a lead magnet.”

“Well don’t get any ideas, Mr. Knight. I’m married, and there isn’t any lead in my body.”

“I’m E Z,” I told her.

“Yes, I suspect you are,” she said.

“Would you believe you’re not the first woman to tell me that.”

“Of any
line
you could possibly give me, Mr.
E Z
Knight, I would believe that one the most.”

The sling Doc Dot and a young nurse made for me came off as soon as they left the emergency room. It had taken the two of them an incredible amount of time and care to fit me with the thing, and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Besides, I think those girls had a crush on me.

I went to Tamara’s room and waited for her to come around after being sedated. The
mind your 'Ps' and 'Qs'
lecture
Officer White Cloud
had given me when we first met on the dining deck at Smokey’s Marina went out the window as soon as
Tamara
awakened.

After giving her a few minutes to get oriented, I pushed her in a wheelchair to where Lt. Legend was recovering in ICU.

Harper Lee Legend was a beautiful, but very tough and lucky cop. The bullet she’d taken had passed nearly all the way through from her back, dead center of the scapula, and had missed everything vital. It was easily extracted from about two inches below her collar bone, just under the skin.

I was a little surprised
but pleased the medical staff let us slip in to see her. She was woozy from the drugs, but told a uniformed female officer at her bedside that we were “okay,” and the small-framed Asian cop offered me her chair.

I noticed the double-bar rank insignias on her shoulders.

“No thanks, Captain,” I told her. “We won’t be long.”

Harper said, “E Z, this is Captain Sally Chang, my partner.”

“Good to meet you, Captain Chang,” I told her. “Looks like you might need a
new
partner for a week or two.”

Chang chuckled and it surprised me.

Harper frowned. “No she won’t!”

“Mr. Knight,” Chang told me, “I don’t believe you understand the kind of partnership we have.”

Harper said, “E Z, Sally is in
Records and Identification
, I’m in
Robbery-Homicide
.

I was perplexed for only a moment. “Oh, uh — sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. We’re happy.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’m sorry I misunderstood.”

“It’s okay,” Harper said.

I sighed. “I hear the two officers I escaped from are doing okay. Both were treated and released?”

“They were more pissed than hurt,” the captain replied.

Harper shifted painfully in her bed. “We’ve pieced it all together. If you hadn’t gotten away, it’s likely both Tamara and I would be dead.”

I asked, “What about those two thugs? Do you have anything on them? The survivor talk yet?”

“They’re both dead,” Sally Chang said. “They seem to be a couple of local boys — brothers — suspected of doing a little wet work around LA. They have some minor mob connections. That’s about it.”

Harper said, “We have a shit-pile of paperwork to finish, but your friends will be cleared. I’m not sure what the insurance company will do about the damage to that tow truck.”

She paused and narrowed her eyes at me. “Neither my department nor I am used to sweeping things
under the rug
. What happened shouldn’t have gone down the way it did. But we can’t go back and change it. There’ll be a lot of explaining to do, but we’ll put this behind us and move forward. The main thing is that Tamara is now, and
will be
, safe.”

“I’ll take care of the wrecker truck,” I said. “And as long as you’re not locking me up, I’ll keep an eye on Tamara.”

Harper nodded. “You have something to speak with me about?”

“Tamara does.”

Tamara played her son’s phone mail message for both Harper and me to hear.

Lance Corporal
Billy White Cloud’s message said: “Mom, I’m still in New Orleans.” He was breathing hard. “I’m not going to make the flight. I’m in trouble. A couple of cops are chasing me, Mom. But I didn’t do anything. They want to kill me because I saw what they were up to.”

Now it sounded like he was running.
"Damn it, here they come! I gotta go!” he said away from the phone. Obvious gunshots rang out, followed by a loud noise like water splashing. Back into the phone, he said, “Mom, I need help! So many children, it’s unbelievable — and they're all going to die if I ...."

The message stopped, and the voice menu started, asking, “If you’d like to keep this message —”

Tamara pushed a button and silence followed for a moment until a nurse came into the room.

Harper said,
"It's a job for the NOPD."

I held my tongue. I didn't want to get involved. I looked at this beautiful woman sitting beside me in the wheel chair.

She was gazing at a photo on her phone. “He sent me this just last week.” She showed it to me.

The image was of a young man with closely cropped, black hair. A grin covered his face while he seemed to be playing a guitar. Behind him, an obese black man with gray hair held a trombone to his lips, and a beautiful redhead stood beside the man while raising a saxophone.

All three stood in front of a little corner shop and were surrounded by a small crowd of smiling onlookers. The sign above the store’s doorway read
Jazzy Brass.

I
glanced at Tamara and empathized with her distress. I thought about what it would be like if one of my children were in danger.

“He loves playing the guitar,” Tamara said, then broke into heavy sobs. She buried her face against my arm.

Trying to be comforting, I stroked her soft, charcoal-black hair.

After a long moment and a couple of breaths, she recovered. “He’s never been in trouble before.
Been on recruiter duty in New Orleans for about three months now. Really proud of that job.” She looked at Harper. “But earlier this morning, a USMC provost marshal called and said he was AWOL, as of three days ago.”

She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “He was supposed to take leave starting last night and catch a flight here to visit for a few days
. I was worried, but he wouldn’t answer his phone. I was just hoping he’d arrive on the flight like we’d planned, and we could sort it all out. I miss him so much. His father died a few years back.” She gave me a small but proud smile. “He was a hero in Desert Storm.”

She
was hopeless — until I cringed inwardly and told her, “You remember what I said about being a strong ally. I am very capable at getting certain things done.”

As the nurse repositioned an oxygen sensor on Harper’s finger, she said, “I’m afraid you’ll all need to leave now. Lt. Legend needs rest.”

Harper pushed the nurse’s hand away, “No! Absolutely not. You can’t go to Louisiana. I haven’t seen your file yet. But, from what I understand, you’re not supposed to leave this state.”

“Not without my parole officer’s permission,” I said smiling at Tamara.

Before I knew it, Tamara had me booked on an early morning flight to the Big Easy.

*   *   *

It was midevening when I headed back to Smokey’s Marina to finish arrangements for my sailboat. I figured I’d spend the night on my new twenty-year-old Catalina 27-footer — no better way to get acquainted with a “
her”
of any kind than to sleep with
her
.

Upon making a quick call, I was pleased to discover my friends Beautiful, his wife Abby, and Booger were still waiting for me.

The first person I met when I arrived was a thin, redheaded teenager with two large garbage bags in each hand, trotting out to the dumpsters in the back.

“Hi,” he said, as I walked up from the parking lot. “I’ll bet you’re Mr. E Z.”

I smiled at him. “Just E Z to you, my friend.”

“I’m Robert — Robert Smith. Most people call me Rabbit — I guess ‘cause I work and talk fast. My mother owns the marina.”

“Let me help you,” I told him and took two of the bags and swung them into the dumpster.

“Thanks!” He threw the other two in. “Your friends are inside telling some really wild stories about you. Are they all true?”

I sighed, wondering which
really wild stories
they were telling, and if I’d have to find a different marina to dock my boat.

I told him, “I hate to admit I’ve never known either of my buddies to lie.”

He grinned. “They’re sure telling some funny ones.”

“So those are the ones they’re telling,” I said and put my arm around the young man’s shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go in and face the music.”

We stepped into the Wizard's Grog and Galley, and I gave a quick wave to my friends at the bar. For some crazy reason, I expected Rabbit’s mother to be a large, big-eared woman with buck teeth and a cotton tail. But, if his mom was the one sitting at the opposite end of the bar, my expectations were way off the mark.

Smokey was truer to her name, and
I was impressed with her beauty. I recalled catching a glimpse of her in the small crowd of onlookers this morning — but that glimpse didn’t begin to do her justice. Like Tamara, she had a great figure, a lightly tanned complexion, and long, dark hair. Only Smokey’s hair leaned a bit more to the brown side of black.

She
hadn’t glanced up to see that I’d entered with her son, instead her words seeming overwrought with worry. “Rabbit, honey, we’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready for the open house. A good hundred feet of deck boards need repaired or replaced, and all the restroom toilets that aren't leaking are plugged up. If next weekend doesn’t go well —” She sighed. “I just hope we don’t lose any more business from that mess we had this morning.”

Then, she saw me. “It’s you!” she said. “You were involved in that, weren’t you?”

Her eyes were milk-chocolate brown and her full, red lips seemed to be in a perpetual smile. It made it impossible for me to take my eyes off her.

“Not on purpose,” I said.

Rabbit pulled up a barstool on the other side of her, as she said, “But the police arrested you.”

“A mistake,” I assured her. “Look. I’d like to rent a slip for my boat.”

She frowned. I could tell she was weighing the idea against telling me to take a hike. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I saw your boat — the Catalina 27. A slip will run $2400 for twelve months. No credit, paid in advance. You have to have insurance too. And I do a thorough background check, and—”

“Listen,” I said, “I’ll tell you all about me, and you won’t need the background check. I’m a convicted felon. I spent three years in a Federal pen for murdering my wife. I broke out and then killed two FBI special agents.”

Her eyes could not have been wider as she reached protectively for Rabbit’s arm.

“That’s the bad part. Here’s the good part.” Knowing it wouldn’t get me any points, I smiled anyway. “The good part is that I was acquitted of murdering my wife. And the FBI agents I killed were involved in her death, but I couldn’t prove it. So, I ended up with ten years parole for two counts of second degree voluntary manslaughter.”

I paused to give her time to digest this obviously enlightening info. “The lady in the parking lot was my parole officer. She wants me to find ‘gainful employment and a residence by the end of the month’. I need your help. I’d like to rent a slip for my boat, and I’ll do odd jobs around the marina, if you’ll let me. You don’t even have to pay me. Okay?”

She frowned, obviously bewildered.

“I’m a good guy,” I told her. “I just need a break.”

I’d driven into California with over forty thousand in cash. A little idiosyncrasy of mine, I generally like to pay my bills with the real green stuff rather than with plastic or checks. This was no exception.

“I’ll pay cash for the slip, four-years’ worth.” I reached into my back pocket, pulled out two banded stacks of bills, and shoved one of them back into place. “Here’s ten thousand. I’d like a covered stall to park my car, as well.”