Jones nodded. “As far as I can tell, we have two defective handguns and . . .”
“And?” Payne muttered, hoping that he was forgetting something important.
“And that’s about it! As far as I can tell, we have two broken Glocks.”
Payne leaned his head against the Chevy Celebrity that protected him and groaned. Their current inventory wouldn’t stop a mugger, let alone a well-placed sniper. “Is there anything else in there that can be used? A gun behind the counter? A telephone? A flashlight?”
“Oh, shit!” Jones suddenly shrieked. “I just thought of something big!”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“Levon!”
The answer stunned Payne. Somehow he had completely forgotten about Greene. “Holy hell! Why don’t you see where that badass is hiding?”
“Be back in a flash.”
Payne snuggled up against the car the best he could, trying to conceal his body under the maroon frame. He realized if the sniper attempted a ground assault, the only way he could protect himself was by hiding under the car. Thankfully, before that was necessary, Payne detected a sound in the far-off distance. At first he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but after a few seconds of listening, he knew that he wasn’t. It was the wail of sirens, and they were headed his way.
“Jon?” Jones shouted from the back of the shop. “Is that what I think it is?”
Payne peered underneath the Chevy and saw several squad cars pulling onto his street. “Yes, Mr. Jones, the cavalry has arrived!”
“Thank God.”
“You said it.” Payne leaned back on the sidewalk, his legs still underneath the car for protection. “By the way, how’s Levon doing?”
Instead of shouting his response, Jones scrambled out of the store and took a seat next to his friend. Once he was safely behind the car, he turned toward Payne and looked him dead in the eye. “You’re not going to believe this. You’re really not.”
“What now?”
“I don’t even know how to start, but . . .” Jones struggled for the right words to break the news to his friend. “Levon is gone.”
Payne sat upright, the color draining from his face. “Oh, my God! How did he-”
“No,” Jones said as he grabbed Payne’s arm. “He’s not
gone. He’s
gone. I don’t know how he did it, but that slippery son of a bitch managed to escape.”
CHAPTER 22
AS
the police pulled to a screeching stop in front of Sam’s Tattoos, Payne stared at Jones, trying to determine if his best friend was serious. After several seconds, Payne decided that he was. “Levon has disappeared?”
“Yep. He’s gone.”
Payne shook his head in disbelief. “How is that possible? He’s, like, eight feet tall and weighs five hundred pounds, yet you managed to lose him in an empty room.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I thought you were supposed to be a professional detective.”
“I am. And in my professional opinion, I’m telling you he’s not in there.”
Payne leaned closer to Jones and tried to smell his breath. “Have you been drinking?”
Jones grinned. “I wish I was.”
Payne was about to reply, but before he had a chance, a booming voice shattered the stillness of the night.
“We see you behind the car,” announced a patrolman through his bullhorn. “Put your hands where we can see them and come out very slowly.”
The two of them did as they were told and were frisked by a team of gun-toting officers.
“Gentlemen,” barked Sergeant Rutherford, the lead officer at the scene, “I’m sure you realize y’all have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rutherford was in his mid-forties and possessed the face of an ex-boxer. His nose was crooked, his teeth were fake, and his face was dotted with several scars. His thick black hair was splashed with gray, but his police hat covered most of it.
“Before I throw you guys in cuffs and haul your asses to the station, you need to tell me what happened here.”
Payne cleared his throat and began to speak before Jones had a chance to say anything. “My buddy and I just flew in to New Orleans earlier tonight for a little R amp; R. We rented a car, got something to eat, and decided to do something out of the ordinary. A local told us that Jamaican Sam drew the best tattoos in the whole darn state-”
“A lovely state, I might add.”
“It sure is, D.J. Anyway, we decided to come here to check out his craftsmanship.”
“We were impressed. Very colorful stuff.”
“But we were here for less than ten minutes when somebody shot Sam from across the street.”
“We think from that rooftop there,” Jones said, pointing. “With a sniper rifle.”
“We wanted to fight back.”
“But we didn’t have any weapons.”
Payne nodded. “I hid in the corner for protection, and D.J. dove behind the counter.”
“When I was back there, I found two guns. I tossed one to Jon and kept the other for myself.”
“We tried to use them when the madman started shooting at us.”
“But neither of them worked.”
“I left mine on the sidewalk,” Payne volunteered.
“And mine is inside.”
“You can check for yourself. Neither of them is capable of firing a round.”
“Yep,” Jones seconded. “I squeezed the trigger, but it wouldn’t make a bang or nothing.”
Payne paused in thought. “Anything else you can think of?”
Jones shook his head. “Nope. I think that covers it.”
Payne nodded in agreement. “That’s about all we’ve got, sir. Hopefully that makes your report pretty easy to write.”
Rutherford studied the two men and smiled. He wanted to comment on the conversation but was simply too fascinated to speak. Even though Payne’s and Jones’s statements were coming from two different voices, it was like they were coming from the same mind. When Payne started a sentence, Jones finished it. If Jones started, Payne ended it. Rutherford had been on the job for over twenty years and had never seen anything like it.
“Okay,” the cop muttered as he emerged from his trance. “We’ll take a look around and see if your story checks out. If it does, y’all have nothing to worry about. I’ll have you back on your vacation by sunrise. However, if it doesn’t, then you might be staying here in our state”-Rutherford turned his head toward Jones and smirked-“pardon me, our
state, for a lot longer than you were planning. In the meantime, why don’t you guys show me some ID? That’ll give me a chance to see if y’all have escaped from a mental health facility, which is a distinct possibility in my book.”
AFTER
examining the scene for an hour, Rutherford decided that Payne and Jones were telling the truth. But before he let them go, he decided to discuss the facts with his second in command. “Richie, can you think of any reason to
