Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African-American Authors (40 page)

“Jenny,” Chainey implored.

“Fine, for the sake of my customers.”

Upstairs at Truxton, Ltd., Chainey hoped that since Mooch Maltizar was past sixty and enjoyed his afterhours Cuba Libres, rum and coke, with his cigars, he would have written down the combination to the safe in case he forgot. But as it was now almost twelve-thirty, she was trying to be methodical and not just rushed in looking for it. That the numbers would be in Mooch's office was a given. So at least the area she had to search was knowable.

The phone rang, and she let the machine get it. Nobody spoke on the other end, so it had to be the two hitters calling on their way back to check if anyone had come in. And the third party, the one that had engaged Mooch, was no doubt going to be pissed that their goods weren't going to reach them. But, Chainey reminded herself, one set of worries at a time.

Fortunately, the blinds hadn't been opened yet by Mooch in his office, as the morning had been overcast and the sun had come out late. She started her hunt in his office with occasional breaks to peek through a slat for the return of the watchers. And she hoped none of the other couriers of the company had any business that required them to come in today.

Less then ten minutes later, the Jaguar returned. The tall man, Hal, got
out, and Chainey observed him as he walked up to the shops on the ground floor. After a few moments, having no doubt confirmed that the nail salon was closed, she heard his footsteps on the concrete stairs. She remained motionless, one of the office guns, a 15-shot Glock 20, ready at her side.

The door handle jiggled. Chainey hadn't reset the alarm. It had been off due to Mooch having been hustled out of the place, probably with a gun in his ribs. The tall man's heavy footfalls echoed on the balcony as he prowled back and forth in front of the office. The window shuddered. Chainey figured the frustrated hood had pounded the pane. His footsteps then receded.

It took Chainey longer than she would have liked to find the safe's combination. The crafty old player had secreted the numbers, typed out on his Underwood circa Horace Greeley, on a little sheet of paper he'd cut to a sliver, and taped to the underside of the back padding of his executive chair. In the corner of the office, the safe squatted. The thing was a Defiant, a free-standing '50s-era floor model old battle hull of a mother that had been there before Chainey came on board.

She dialed the combination and opened the heavy door. Inside were all manner of items ranging from bundled bills to jewelry boxes. The accordion file had an object wrapped in white sheeting on top of it, and she had to remove it to get what she wanted. Curious, she unwrapped the cloth to reveal a weathered machine pistol that had Japanese lettering stamped on the stock. She shrugged, replaced the piece, and shut the safe. Now came the hard part. She had to get to her car.

At the entrance she took a deep breath, mentally ran through her plan, shaky as it was, and stepped onto the landing. Chainey had reset the alarm and walked toward the stairs, but not fast. This part called for icy nerves to resist running.

Hal, who'd been standing in the parking lot smoking, was striding quickly to the foot of the steps. “Hey, I want to talk with you,” he demanded, his long legs brining him up two steps at a time.

Chainey made sure she stopped halfway down. “Who the hell are you?” She tried to sound unaware.

“Don't you worry about that, sweetness.” His hand was inside his
jacket, locking on the piece she was sure he kept there in a shoulder rig. “What ya got there, huh?” He asked, referring to the file. They were now both in the middle of the stairs, separated by less than an arm's length.

“Oh, this?” She produced the Taser she'd taken from the office and shot the two probes into his chest and juiced him.

“Fuck,” Hal hollered as the volts charred his kidneys, causing his legs to buckle. But he was strong and held on to the rail, the piece slack in his gun hand. “Fuckin' bitch,” he slurred, dropping the gun and making an anemic grab for Chainey.

“Nice meeting you too.” She jabbed an elbow into his face, and the tall man fell ass end off the stairs. His pal in the Hawaiian shirt was out of the Jaguar heading toward them, but Chainey had scooped up Hal's gun, an old-fashioned Smith & Wesson revolver, and leveled it. The Glock stuck out of her back pocket.

“Now, look, baby—”

“I ain't hardly your baby. Face down,” she ordered.

“I'm sure we can—”

“You want to try me to see if I know how to use this thing?”

“I guess I don't.” He complied.

Hal groaned as Chainey gained the lot and patted down the man in the flashy shirt. She took the gun he had on his belt and walked to their car.

“We can work this out you know,” Hawaiian shirt said. “Money is the great communicator.”

Chainey ignored him and got the hood of the Jaguar open. She pulled out a few electronic pieces connected to the engine, hoping that would incapacitate their car.

“This is only a minor delay, Miss. We've got time and resources.”

“Aren't you special.” Chainey got in her car and as she backed up, Hawaiian shirt was helping his stunned partner to his feet. Hal was bleeding from the nose. She zoomed away in the T-Bird.

At the Excalibur, Chainey bought a cup of coffee at the McDonald's in the food court. She was ahead of schedule and walked around the tables. Given the hour of the day, the place was full, and it was hard getting a full view of the tabletops because of food trays, extra large cups of soda, and
what not. Because she didn't want to look too suspicious, she walked in and out of the section. It would do no good to have security show up to escort the lady making the kids nervous away. She wasn't having any luck spotting the table with the carved letters. It was now 12:43.

She kept circulating. A man with straggly shoulder-length hair, in a T-shirt with the rock band Creed's logo on it, sat at a corner table slowly munching on his Big Mac. Fries were spread out before him like pieces of a chic jigsaw puzzle. He had the baggy-eyed air of having pulled an all-nighter at the tables and come up short. Way short. He looked up as Chainey cruised past.

“You showgirls think the world owes you the driver's seat of life, don't you?”

Please, she told herself, let this fool be talking to himself. She kept going but, naturally, he was going to get her attention.

“Gonna ignore me, huh? Spend my money in this pussy trap, get the toothy smile and the free drinks as long as I'm feeding the slots.” He was starting to squeeze his hamburger. “All of you are worthless cunts.”

The people around him did their best to continue talking and eating amiably, hoping that indifference would make him shut up or at least return to gambling elsewhere. Chainey looked back at the table now that he'd shifted his arms. Sure enough, her initials were etched there. It was 12:46.

She came closer. “Why be so unfriendly?”

One of the man's orbs was shrunk to the size of a dot, the other pushing and engorged, seemingly contaminated with brain fluids that had leaked into that side. “You know why.” He held onto his Big Mac with both hands, the veins rigid on his thin forearms. Pinkish sauce embedded with bits of chopped onion dribbled across his fingers.

“You know,” he said again, taking another bite, smacking loudly.

The cell taped beneath the table chimed a tune, and Chainey had to sit next to him to reach for it.

“Okay, yeah,” the goof bobbed his head agreeably. “All you chicks eventually come around to the dude. Don't milk my lizard too hard, baby.” He cackled like a hyena.

Chainey withdrew the phone and clicked it on. She tried to get up, but her new boyfriend had put an arm around her shoulders, staining her shirt with gooey stuff.

“I got your package.”

“Good,” the voice on the other end said.

“Let me talk to Mooch, or I burn what's in it now.”

The goof leaned toward her. “I love black women. You know how to treat your men.”

“What?” the kidnapper said.

Chainey stomped her boot heel on the clown's tennis shoe-clad foot. He didn't yell as she expected, but his face and upper body twitched convulsively, like a man attacked by hornets. She rose.

“Quit fucking around. I don't know if Mooch is breathing, dead, or incapacitated. But this goes no further until I talk to him.” She had to bank on his greed or desperation, or both. “Go ahead, drag this out. How long do you think before Hal and Mister Hawaiian stud catch up to you, asshole?”

“They follow you?”

“Yeah, I'm that stupid.”

“Hold on.” There was the fumbling of the phone, the scuffing of feet, and inaudible conversation. Then her boss said in his thick Cuban accent. “I'm here, chica.
No preoccupado. No se—
”

“No Spanish,” the kidnapper ordered, snatching the phone back. “Okay, you had your little pow-wow, now you do as I say, and everything will be just swell.”

The goof was again occupied with her burger.

“It better be. Now where do we finish this?”

The rear side window looked like a dry riverbed crisscrossed with parched lines then imploded, and hundreds of tinkling pieces rained down. Chainey crawled forward in the dirt and squeezed off two shots from around the T-Bird's tire. She didn't expect to hit anyone, just let that joker handling the shotgun know she was still kicking.

That done, she pulled her body back and got up on a knee.

It didn't help matters that the sun was now up high and that there
wasn't much in the way of shelter in Tender Oaks—there wasn't much of Tender Oaks in general.

The plan had been for Nevada Power to build a coal-burning plant in this desert section east of Boulder City butting up against the Arizona border. The rest of Nevada might be static in its growth, but Vegas was sprouting like wild weeds. And as the city and environs expanded upwards and outwards, the beast of a million neon signs had a need to gobble up more and more electricity. The Tender Oaks power station was to be a pristine example of public and private capital working together for the common good and commerce.

Only the transmission lines were blueprinted to travel over sacred Indian burial grounds. A court challenge was a mounted by the Shoshones to block the development. And during the process of discovery by the attorneys, funny addition had been revealed. The private sector developer, Rene Hillibrand, had disappeared, and the project was stalled in suits and countersuits.

“Come on, let's join forces. We have the same objective in mind,” Hawaiian shirt yelled to Chainey. He was crouched behind large spools of cable, nearer to the Nevada Power maintenance shed.

“Let's ask Hal,” she quipped.

“Fuck her and Fraizen.” The tall man and his shotgun were on the far side of the Tahoe SUV they'd screeched to a stop in minutes after Chainey.

“He's just blowing off steam,” the one hiding behind the spools said. “He's really a big ol' teddy bear.”

“Well I'm not hugging him,” she muttered.

“Chainey,” the man in the Hawaiian shirt said, “there's got to be a reasonable way we can come to terms. We want Fraizen, and you want your boss back. They're both in that shack. And Fraizen's a punk. Gun or no gun, he's not going to be a problem.”

He knew her name. They worked fast. “And the file?”

“That's our property, you devious skank,” Hal bellowed. “You ain't getting it.”

“Shut up, Hal,” his partner advised. “I'm trying to work a deal here.

“No,” he answered in a tone like a defiant teenager. “You can't trust her. She'll cut you down first chance she gets.”

Hawaiian shirt asked, “So now what? Wait here until a police chopper flies overhead and we all go to the pokey?”

From where she was, Chainey was pinned down by Hal. But if Hawaiian shirt stepped out toward the shack where this Fraizen and Mooch were, she could tag him.

Fraizen appeared at the window of the shed again, half his face showing as it did when Chainey had first arrived. “Ramos, I got something to trade for my life.”

Ramos, the one in the bright shirt, called out. “You suckin' hind tit, Fraizen. Like you been doing all your lousy life.”

“The old man, he's got all kinds of shit in that safe. I know they move money for the casino owners.”

“Oh, you stupid,” Hal began.

“Yeah,” Ramos cut in, “that sounds good, Fraizen. Real good. You bring him out, we sweat him, and we all go home rich.”

Chainey shook her head. Hal and Ramos were pros. They knew better than ripping off the cold cash belonging to the types that Mooch delivered for. They weren't going to bring that kind of heat down on themselves. But Ramos had to be hedging that Fraizen saw no other way out, and believed his foolish offer had weight. They were going to kill him and Mooch, too, in the process, if he was in the way.

“Nothing happens to Mooch,” she said from her cover.

“Things have a way of working themselves out in these funky trick-bags, Chainey.”