“Noble of you.”
“Yeah, I’m swell. If I can get Abadon, you don’t have to worry about the heat from the OD’s that they’re trying to pin on you.”
He sat back and crossed his legs talk-show style, putting his fingertips together as he thought. I wondered if this asshole ever did anything that wasn’t contrived.
“And you want exactly what from me?” he said.
“Right now, information.”
“Listening…”
“Abadon was loading packages for two Asian guys today. Identical SUVs-”
“The Lees, Hun and Sun, they are brothers. They traffic in New York. ‘Distribute’ is probably a better term.”
“New York guys coming up here? Isn’t that backwards? Isn’t all the drug business in the city?”
“The Sky Pilot does wondrous things. His concoctions will make crack look like potato chips.”
“It’s that big?”
“It will be. Word is that my man of God has worked the kinks out and his new product won’t kill the user. New York is where things happen first. If he turns on the city that doesn’t sleep, the word will be out and right now he is the only man that can cook this special Sunday dinner.”
“How do you know the shit isn’t fatal anymore?”
“The Sky Pilot is a man of science, my friend. You might say his clinical trials have been completed.”
“Dead kids?”
The Caretaker half shrugged and half nodded.
“What are Mitchell and Harter in all of this?”
“Security; they are not players. The word is they enjoy the muscle formulas that the doctor fashions for them. They are quite protective of that.”
“Is Abadon a threat to you?”
“Is Toyota a threat to GM? Better yet, if Toyota could put out a better product and then restrict the raw materials from GM, that would cause GM’s stock to plummet, would it not?”
“Sure.”
“I no longer put my faith in the Sky Pilot.”
“In effect, then, if I can take him out, I would be doing you a favor.”
“It would save me the trouble.”
“Caretaker, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“I’ve always loved Casablanca,” he said.
We spent the next hour working out the details of what we were going to do. It was a mess, mostly illegal, and, if I screwed up, deadly. Kelley wouldn’t be proud of me and what I was about to do, at least not until it was over. If everyone lived through it, he might shake his head, tell me I’m nuts, and then crack a smile.
Maybe.
Tom Schreck
TKO
38
The Caretaker pulled out of his condo complex in Londonville, not far from TC’s house, and headed out of town toward Gunner’s karate compound. In his new Saab, the Caretaker didn’t look like your average brother from the ’hood. I guess when you live in a condo in the city’s richest suburb you’re not really from the street at all.
I followed him on the twenty-minute drive out to 44 and pulled off to the side while he went down the compound’s dirt drive. I angled on foot across the open fields leading to the compound with the goal of coming up on the back side of the steel building. I didn’t count on the field being semi-marsh and that every stride would take me two inches into muck. It took me close to forty minutes to get into place, and I hoped the delay didn’t screw up the plans.
I squatted in the mud and looked in between five-foot-high cattails with my binoculars to see what was happening. The caretaker’s Saab was parked by the gate to the stone garden and the Lee brothers’ SUVs were there, parked farther up the drive. While I waited, Mitchell and Harter came down the drive to join the party, and when they got out they opened the back door and pulled out Howard. Perfect, everyone was in place.
Howard looked awful. His hair was long and a tangled mess and he hadn’t shaved in a long time, which gave him one of those really fine kinky beards that redheads get. He had a blank look on his face, and through the binoculars I could see the deep circles under his eyes. Mitchell and Harter were talking to him and laughing, but Howard’s face remained blank like he was incoherent. He began to walk with them to the weight-training area and he shuffled like he was sedated. When they got to the weight area Harter motioned for him to sit at a bench while they did their workout.
The door to the steel building opened and out came the Lee brothers, followed by the Caretaker and then Gunner, who was pushing a handcart. The Caretaker brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose to wipe his eyes and I received the signal. I pulled out Jerry Number Two’s video cam with the zoom and started filming. The Caretaker by now had started recording his conversation. The video camera worked remarkably well and I filmed as Gunner spoke to his audience, talking with his hands and smiling the whole time.
There was a pause in the conversation, and the Caretaker reached into his blazer pocket and pulled out the envelope. Gunner was smiling from ear to ear and the Lees turned and gave each other high-fives. It was Gunner’s peak experience and his shining moment of success, and now he was getting the financial reward that came at the expense of who knows how many dead kids and inmates.
The Caretaker still had the envelope and now he was speaking, prolonging the transaction and probably setting up Gunner to say the exact right words. He was doing this with no risk to his own career, as I had promised him he would not appear in the video that I was going to send to the police and that his voice would be disguised. The Caretaker was smiling and holding the envelope for Gunner when the group of them was startled by an awful metallic clanging coming from the weight-training area.
I looked up and Howard was sprinting as fast as he could toward the woods. While Mitchell was bench pressing and Harter was spotting, Howard had hurled a ten-pound dumbbell that hit Mitchell right in the nuts, causing him to drop the three-hundred-some-pound bar and plates violently on his chest. It was perfectly timed because Harter was struggling in vain to pull up the weight to keep Mitchell from suffocating. The bar tipped to one side while the plates flew off and then, like a kid’s teeter-totter, it slammed back in the other direction. There was screaming and clanging and the perfect distraction for Howard’s getaway.
It also ruined my project.
Howard, the man who was the patsy for every crime Gunner committed and a witness to every dirty deed, headed for the thick woods. The meeting with the Caretaker was abruptly closed while everyone ran after Howard into the woods. Howard had a two-hundred-yard head start and a straight forty-foot run to the dense brush while the others had to get around the rock garden and over the training area. By the time they got past the weight area there was already no sign of Howard.
Meanwhile, the Caretaker was pulling out in his Saab, probably figuring that nothing good was going to happen if he were to hang around. Gunner had stopped running and he yelled at Mitchell and Harter to go after Howard. Mitchell, however, couldn’t move yet and Harter was trying to help him. Gunner clearly didn’t want to leave the compound. The problem was, Howard grew up in these woods and it wasn’t going to be any easy trick finding him.
Gunner stepped into the shed next to the weight-training area and came out with two handguns, which he gave to Mitchell and Harter. Mitchell was moving again, albeit slowly, and he and Harter headed to the woods. I was reasonably confident that Howard could avoid them for a while.
Although I had never spent any time in those woods I was even more confident that I would be able to find Howard easily. But I was going to have to head back to the Moody Blue. Howard probably could stay out of trouble
