Impact tom keeler book 3, p.13
Impact (Tom Keeler Book 3), page 13
The guy smiled.
I said, “You think that’s a joke?”
He came in once more with a flurry of deceptive jabs and tricky footwork. I stepped clear of the jabs and watched for the big one. When it came, I moved inside the heavy punch and knocked it out with my left elbow. I faked a right hook to the temple and came in with a forearm to the throat. The guy bobbed his head back and avoided most of it, but the elbow nicked his windpipe.
He came back hard. A blur of footwork and jabs. The guy switched out of his right-handed stance and came at me southpaw. I could see his eyes darting and focused behind the hands, held high and protective. He bobbed his head deceptively like a turkey. I read a quick set of jabs, but they concealed a big uppercut. The fist came up through my defenses. I watched it coming like it was in slow-motion. Massive fist with scarred knuckles came into perfect focus at a near vertical angle. I knew if that fist landed on my chin it was game over. I’d already committed the hands, extended on my arms to individual tasks, like blocking the jabs that were there, and the one that wasn’t. I let my body weight drop to a crouch on soft knees. Got my head quickly out of his target range.
The big fist flew by my face and I was looking straight at his midriff. I sprung off the crouch and launched at him, fully committed. I used my body weight to put a knee into his groin and scored a bull’s-eye, big time. The man went down coughing and spitting, full-scale involuntary emergency. He had his head tucked into his chest and was saying something I couldn’t understand. I came in closer, wary. He coughed and mumbled. “Got to do more damage, for the cameras.”
I tried to be casual and glanced around the room, taking in the two mid-size camera bubbles in opposite corners. I snatched a grease rag from the tool station and wrapped it twice around my hand, gripping the loose cloth in my fist.
I said, “Clench your teeth.”
He nodded, eyes squeezed in pain. I stepped in and smashed my fist into the side of his face. Followed that up with a hook to his nose. The guy’s head snapped back and blood sprayed out on to the floor. He grunted. I stepped away, unwrapped the rag, threw it on the tool bench, and waited for him to recover. I’d avoided the blood spray, so my shirt was only slightly worse off than it had been.
The man rose to his knees and shook his head a couple of times. He reached up with both hands to his nose and grabbed it firmly. I heard the crack and pop as the cartilage straightened out inside the tightly packed flesh. He lifted his tank top up and over his head and used it as a rag to wipe off the blood and snot. He spit into the rag. “What do you need?”
“I want to know about the keys that get picked up from this place. The house keys. Then I want to know who owns it.”
“You said you had one question.”
“Now it’s two.”
The guy nodded and wiped his face. “Yeah ,well, first question is easy. No idea what you are talking about. We’ve got keys to the vehicles under repair, and to those in the used car lot. Otherwise, I don’t know what you’re referring to.”
I examined him. His face was shiny with sweat and blood. He was mopping it up, but the blood kept coming. I wondered if it was possible that this mechanic hadn’t ever gone past the little chain marked Private.
“Tilt your head more.”
He tilted his head more.
“Tell me about the shop, then.”
“Ricardo owns it, technically. But Ricardo owes a dude they call The Bob.” His eyes flashed white as he glanced at me. “That’s what you’re here about, right?”
I tried out the sound. “The Bob. That’s, what, a person’s name, or an object?”
“It’s what they call the big man. You aren’t from around here.”
It wasn’t a question. I said nothing.
He said, “The Bob is the word they use to refer to a person of fearsome reputation and power in this town, and possibly the state. I wouldn’t exactly know, as I’m not involved in anything more than getting into the pit and making things work better than they did before they came in.”
“That’s nice. What is The Bob supposed to be?”
“A loan shark plus, is what I’d call him.”
“Plus what?”
“Plus the drugs and whatever else they’re involved with.”
“That it?”
“What I heard. I just work on the cars.”
“Who hangs out upstairs?”
The guy blew blood and snot out of his nose into the bunched-up tank top. “Like I said, I just work here. I’m out by six, regular. Sometimes I see them come in and don’t see them come out. I never go up there. It’s a what-do-you-call-it, a boy’s club.”
“For The Bob and his friends.”
“I suppose, except I’ve never seen The Bob here, or anywhere for that matter. No idea what The Bob looks like. I just know the name.”
“Dumb name.”
He glanced up at me then, wary and wise. “Might be, but that doesn’t stop people from saying it with a straight face. Always figured there was a good reason behind that.”
I looked at the guy, still moving his nose cartilage around like it was going to make a difference. “Thanks for taking the beating. ”
He spat into his shirt again. “They should give you a medal or something.”
I nodded. “They already gave me a couple.”
I picked up the old pistol and shoved it into the waistband behind my back, then pulled my shirt out to cover it. I eased the front door open and walked out, letting it swing closed behind me. My hand ached from hitting the guy, despite the padding I’d wrapped around my fist.
The air was cooler outside, thanks to a nice breeze from the southeast. I looked up at the sound of gravel crunching under tires. The silver van with paneled sides pulled into the parking lot and stopped fifty feet away. The same two Hispanic guys from Linda Cartwright’s house were in the cab, looking at me through the windshield.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I remembered the two in the silver van. Stocky, tough men who looked like they’d been raised far from Indiana. A world away from regularly spaced suburban houses and freshly watered front lawns. I couldn’t see them clearly through the windshield given the glare, so all I got were the silhouettes with some minor detail. Enough to know that the driver was chewing gum. Both men wore aviators, distinct shapes in distinct head formations.
I made a left from the door and walked along the front of the building. I had the tune in my head from the shopping mall, it came easily to my lips as a whistle. I heard the crunch of gravel again as the van crept up on my six. The corner of the building was about ten paces away. I focused on whistling.
Two sets of eyes drilled into my back, like a weight, appraising, calculating. It was no coincidence that they were here. Someone had been alerted by the camera feed coming out of the key cabinet. Maybe some kind of an automated messaging system triggered when I opened the box. I didn’t want to turn around, nor did I want to run. That would send out all the wrong signals. The men in the silver van were predators, at least here in Promise, Indiana.
Their problem was they’d confused me for prey.
The two predators were behaving in accordance with what they understood about the habitat. A soft land of suburban families and farmers, with them at the top of the pyramid. I visualized the guy in the passenger seat racking back the slide on a reliable semiautomatic, never taking his eyes off my back. My guess was something practical, like a Glock.
I got to the corner of the building and stepped out of sight around the other side.
I estimated five seconds before the van pulled clear. I was in the narrow alley between building and trees, with the cornfield on the other side. I wanted them to see where I was going, but I needed a head start because I also wanted distance. I sprinted for a four count and stopped abruptly. I glanced back. The van breached the building and the two guys were peering down the side at me. Two pairs of sunglasses turned in my direction. A pause in the gum chewing. Mouth open, the flash of white teeth through the side window.
I took a step across the grass verge and walked into the field.
The corn grew ten feet high, green leaves lush and wide. They’d planted it tight, probably as close together as possible. In an economy of scale, every inch counts. I brushed through the first couple of layers, stopped, and looked back. It was already tough to see beyond even fifteen feet of corn. I got low and put a palm on the soil, grounding myself. I had no real plan, only confidence that I’d figure something out. The dirt was black and rich, peppered with small white stones and detritus from the corn plants. The old pistol rode heavy against the small of my back.
I continued straight through the field for a good minute before stopping again to listen. Nothing was happening, nothing was moving. Only corn growing slow and silent all around me and the blue sky hanging in the heat. It was quiet and the tune I’d been whistling was gone. The only thing in my head was a feeling of calm and the subtle vibration of well-regulated adrenaline and serotonin.
In other words I was in an outstanding mood.
I moved out in a random pattern, making zigzags away from J&S Services. After twenty seconds I stopped once more, crouched and became very still. I got the old pistol out and practiced holding it by the barrel, seeing how I could get the best leverage and grip in relation to the form factor. I’d have to hit hard and move. The last thing I’d want was for the pistol barrel to slip out of my hands. I found a good solution, gripping the middle of the gun and putting my finger backwards through the trigger guard.
Using the pistol as a club struck me as a kind of oxymoron, which made me think about the barrel of a pistol. Which is not something you usually look down, or swing around wildly. Normally you’d only do that after clearing the gun.
I cleared the gun.
It was an old mechanism, from maybe a hundred and fifty years gone by. But it wasn’t anything alien. I could figure out how it worked. The breech was operated by a lever that swiveled the chamber up for loading and unloading, down for firing. I pressed the lever to turn the chamber vertical. The mechanism was lubricated and true. The light of day penetrated the scooped out chamber and I saw a little cartridge tucked in there, snug as a bug.
I extracted it with my fingernails and held it up to the light. A dry, well-formed cardboard package. I sniffed it. Gunpowder, probably black powder, and judging by the weight, a cast lead payload. A similar principle to the firearms I was familiar with. The barrel wasn’t rifled. I pulled back the spring at the rear, exposing the firing pin, which was more needle than pin. I dropped the little cartridge back into the hole and thumbed the lever, locking the firing mechanism and returning the chamber to an active position. I weighed the gun in my hand, holding it properly by the handle.
Better this way than backwards, that was for damn sure. The pistol felt balanced and true.
Now there was a new plan. Shoot the guy, and if that didn’t work, hit him with the angry-faced solid-steel butt. Maybe both if the first and only shot didn’t do the job. The wind came through the corn. Fresh leaves and tassel waved and brushed against other leaves and tassel, making a soft sound.
I took a knee and waited patiently. The two men were in there with me, moving quietly through the corn, looking patiently for an advantage. After a couple of minutes waiting and listening, I moved back toward the place I’d started out. I shuffled in a crab walk, low and quiet, stepping with my heel first, allowing the balls of my feet to roll down. I figured the enemy might have pushed through, looking to circle round and flank me. I assumed they’d split up in the field. I moved, paused and listened, then repeated. Move, pause and listen, move again.
After a couple minutes of that I saw one of them, about fifteen feet away.
It was the movement of the corn that I saw, more than an actual body. A flicker of white and a head of dark hair in the green, passing through at a deliberate pace. I changed direction and came at him, low and slow. The old-time pistol heavy to hand. I had to assume that there would be low accuracy. I’d need to do it point-blank. The smart thing would be to make a semicircle and come up on his six.
I came up on him sooner than I’d anticipated, seeing his back from ten feet away. The corn grew so close that the distances became intimate. I retraced my steps until the visibility dropped off again. It was the man who’d knocked at Cartwright’s door. He was talking to his buddy, who I couldn’t see very well. Two guys, one potentially unreliable bullet. I figured they’d met up to get their situational awareness aligned and agree on the next step.
I could hear the murmur of a quiet conversation. I could see only the faintest trace of them through the growth. One guy turned and disappeared, the other guy came toward me, angled to pass about six feet in front of my position, moving left to right. He was going slow, crouched and intent on the deep vegetal growth in front of him, like he was trying to suck meaning out of the corn. I backed off even farther, then came around at an angle calculated to flank him.
Two minutes later I was creeping up on his six, slow and quiet, like a cat. I extended the old pistol in front of me. The barrel was around sixteen inches long, like having an extended arm. The spring-loaded needle was pulled back. I was hoping the thing would work. It occurred to me that if it misfired, I’d have to grab a potentially very hot barrel to hit the guy with the angry faced butt.
Too late to withdraw.
I mimicked his footsteps, putting my feet down in time with his. Tracking him perfectly, the alpha predator in a zero-sum game. The muzzle was six inches from the back of his head before the guy sensed it. He froze and flicked his head around in a panicked twitch. I pulled the trigger. The spring released with a click and the old gun made a thick explosion. The round came through the smoothbore barrel exiting at a slight angle and smashed into the left side of his face, tearing through his cheekbone and demolishing a quarter of his head. The shot blew the guy into the corn. A flock of starlings rose fluttering into the blue sky with the faint puff of gun smoke.
My gun arm and the left side of my face had been sprayed with bloody back spatter. I wiped my eye and looked down at the body. The guy had fallen on the missing part of his head, the part facing me was intact. The one remaining eye was open and staring. He had slight beard growth around a mouth that looked unhappy even in death.
A Glock 17 had fallen out of his hand, dull and brutal in the dirt. I bent to take it and heard frantic movement through the corn behind me. There was no time to pause, no time to look. I did a twisting dive across the body and rolled gracelessly. I registered the boom of two heavy rounds fired in quick succession. I sprinted deeper into the corn, disappearing in a zigzag. After a hectic few moments, I stopped and got control of my heart rate. Feeling around carefully, I concluded that I hadn’t been wounded.
The shooter must have panicked. It’s one thing to go up against civilians who owe money to a loan shark, and another thing entirely to see your partner with half his face shot off and a guy like me leaning over him. I doubled back, slow and calm. A minute later I came across the body. The Glock was gone and the dead man had nothing in his pockets. I was still holding the old pistol by the barrel, which was cooling off in my hand.
The corn was trampled where the second guy had run in. I figured he’d taken his shots and then tended to his dead friend. The starlings were still up in the sky, a murmuration of birds that moved like a morphing infinity symbol. I waited for them to settle down and noticed where they felt comfortable going. Far away from me, and I figured, far away from him.
I triangulated. There was a lot of corn field to cover, but not an infinite amount. Maybe the guy had seen that I was essentially unarmed. Maybe he was professional enough to discern the sound of an antique gun from something more practical. Maybe he’d seen the old pistol and knew. Either way, there wasn’t much of a chance that he’d decide to call it a day. Chances were he was trying to figure me out.
I moved away from the starlings, straight for the edge of the cornfield, north of J&S Services. People tend to orient themselves to known locations and objects, like the direction they came come from or the place they parked. The comfort zone can be a deadly drug. I followed the edge west for a while, until I felt myself oriented on a new axis, until I owned the cornfield.
I came back into the battle space with a new point of view. A couple of minutes later I saw him.
The corn on the north side of the field was slightly shorter than over on the south side. The sun must have hit it in a different way. I was holding still with the plant tops at eye level when I saw his head pop up about twenty yards from my position. He scanned in the other direction and then dropped down below the corn.
I came up on him two minutes of slow creeping later. The man was sprawled on the ground in a defensive position. A chrome Desert Eagle was held between his two outstretched hands. The dead guy’s Glock was tucked behind him, sticking up out of his waistband. The Desert Eagle looked like too much gun for the little guy, which might have been why he’d missed me. I moved up on him, slow and as quiet as was possible in a densely planted cornfield.
The man must have heard me a little while back. He must have been planning the move, timing it. When I was a couple of strides away he rolled onto his back. The big gun came up at me in front of his concentrated face, muzzle rising fast.
His eyes flashed above the rear sight. I pushed off my right leg and darted to the left. The Desert Eagle boomed once and kicked up in his hand. Big gun, big kick. I needed to close the distance before he could get the gun down again. I pushed off my left leg and dove at him with both hands flailing. The antique pistol went forgotten into the air. The guy managed to pull the trigger but it wasn’t pointing in the right direction. The second shot might have scared the birds, but it didn’t stop me from landing right on top of him.
We scrambled for a second but I got my body weight up over him. He struggled like he meant it. Eyes bulging and neck thick veined and red. I got into a dominant position and jammed a muscled forearm across his neck. I was holding his arms down with one leg and one free arm. He was wiry and small, but strong. I was starting to choke him out, but the Desert Eagle was still in his hand. The Glock was pinned underneath him.
