“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hey, this is Walter.”
“The Walter?”
“The one and only, got a delivery for you, just need to know where to drop it off.”
“What kind of delivery…wait…you’re showing in Mason.”
“Yeah, got this guy trying to run away. Can’t carry this car around forever.”
“Oh…the chase…that started in Norwood. You know where the police station is there?”
“Yeah, be right there. Let ‘em know I’m coming, okay?”
There were police officers waiting in the parking lot when Walter set the car down and the driver was arrested and booked.
“Who’s car is this?” Walter asked one of the cops.
“He stole it over on Williams.”
“Think I could return it real quick?”
“Can’t see why not, here’s the address,” the cop said, handing Walter a piece of paper.
Walter flew toward Williams, found the address and saw a man about his age sitting on the front porch. The man looked up with a bemused expression when he saw his car descending from the sky and he smiled at Walter when he set it down in his driveway.
“Here you go, Mr. Kramer.”
“Why, thank you, Walter. Didn’t figure I’d be meeting you today.”
“Well, just reckoned you’d want this back.”
“You figured right. You in a hurry anywhere else? Get you a beer?”
Walter walked up to the porch. “I was heading home, but who am I to turn down a beer.”
“That’s what I was hoping you would say.”
The man returned a minute later with two beers and handed one to Walter.
“This doesn’t affect your flying?”
“Can’t get drunk.”
“There are times that would suck.”
“It’s not so bad. Hey, this is decent stuff. You don’t look like the craft beer type.”
“My grandson is. He brought some over the other day. It’s not bad, some local brewery up in Oakley.”
Walter took another sip. “I kind of like it. Where’d you say he got it?”
“That place near that big church…Crossroads?”
“Oh yeah, might stop by there on the way home.”
“What’s it like? The flying and all.”
“It’s pretty fun, really. Can’t describe it. Felt weird the first time, looking down wondering what’s holding me up. Now it’s just kind of natural.”
“This is new?”
“Yeah, just a few days. Saw a bright light, woke up different.”
“No idea what the light was?”
“No idea at all. Who would figure, guy my age…not like the comic books.”
“You ever read those things?”
“Nah…read some when I was a kid…but never got into them that much.”
“That explains you not having a suit or anything. How do you go out in public with people recognizing you?”
“That gets hard. I’ve never been a real social guy. Now I can’t go to Kroger without being followed all over the store. Have to scope out the neighborhood before I go in or out of my house. Don’t want folk knowing where I live.”
“What part of town you live in?”
“Clifton.”
“How do you deal with all the kids?”
“Don’t get me started on that.”
“I can’t imagine. How’d you end up there?”
“Long story. Blew through all our money on cancer treatments back in ‘09…sold the house and got a cheap apartment. She…didn’t make it. Just never felt like moving after that.”
“Oh man…that sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. She’s been gone ten years. I thought I’d get over it one of these days. Guess you never really do.”
“Well, I should let you get home. Thanks for getting the car back. And you know, a lot of folks our age think you’re the greatest. Lot better than having some young punk become a hero. Keep it up.”
“Thanks, Mr.—”
“Call me Jack, okay?”
“Okay, Jack. See you around. Thanks for the beer.”
The old warehouse was an eyesore. Better than half the windows were gone and the ones that were still intact were so caked over with grime that nobody could see through them. Anyone venturing through the building would find an unkempt place littered with the residue of nearly a hundred years of industrial operation: broken pallets, rusted out barrels, a broken forklift in one corner, and an office still equipped with a desk and chairs that were state-of-the art during the Kennedy administration. What the occasional homeless person sheltering in the building never saw was the hidden door in the outdated office.
The door was hidden behind an old refrigerator against one wall and opened to a stairway that lead down to a basement that was quite a bit cleaner and better furnished than the upstairs. Catherine Mixon, or Cat to a small group of close associates, had purchased the warehouse five years earlier and transferred it into her base of operations. Cat was not the usual crime boss. She had never had any illusions of earning a legitimate living. Ever since her uncle had let her watch films like Scarface and The Godfather, she had become enchanted by the whole organized crime world and had decided then, at the ripe old age of twelve, that she wanted nothing else but to head up a successful crime organization someday.
That someday had arrived, but not quite as she had envisioned. She started small with drug trafficking, and by age 42 had amassed quite a fortune. It wasn’t enough. She controlled most of the flow of drugs in the Tri-State, but she had bigger goals. The mules that brought everything from the border towns in Texas never delivered to the same place twice, something she learned the hard way years earlier when some of them were caught and she almost lost her entire operation.
She was involved in more than just drugs at this point, also making a tidy profit in arms dealing, money laundering, and occasionally prostitution. She drew the line at human trafficking, feeling that even in her line of work,
