Savage code, p.20
Savage Code, page 20
part #4 of The Porter Series
Porter looked at the picture. “Beautiful.”
“Ella está muerta.” She’s dead.
“Did you…?”
Harsh shook his head. “Robo.” Robbery.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Porter said, genuinely. “Did they ever find out who did it?”
“Yo sí.” I did.
Porter thought for a moment. “Forty-eight months?”
“Y no lo siento.” And I’m not sorry.
“Just sorry you got caught?”
Harsh shrugged.
“Fair enough.”
The men were quiet again for a few moments, until Porter spoke up. “You really done with Osito?”
Harsh nodded.
“You know how this thing goes when I find him, right?”
“No es importante.” It doesn’t matter.
“His guys rough you up and you’re willing to let the man die? Not much loyalty there.”
“Él no se merece lealtad.” He doesn’t deserve loyalty.
“Just like that?”
Harsh shrugged. “Él no debería lastimar a los niños.” He shouldn’t hurt kids.
“I agree with you there.”
There was a faint thump in the trunk.
“Pregunta?” Question?
“You wanna know what the guy in the trunk did, right?”
Harsh nodded.
“He shot my friend.”
“Quién?” Who?
“You’ve seen her.”
“La chica del club?” The girl from the club?
“Yep.”
“Ella era hermosa.” She was beautiful.
“She still is.”
“Ella está viva?” She’s alive?
“Barely,” Porter said through clenched teeth.
“Lo siento.”
“Me too, Harsh. Me too.”
With that, Porter swung open the door and stood in the cool night air. The weather had turned enough that the bugs of summer and early fall were dead, and there were no mosquitos or other annoyances to contend with.
Porter stomped through the overgrown grass, past the trees and back to the road he’d turned off of.
There was no one else around. No errant jogger out with her dog, no father playing an almost-midnight game of soccer with his son by flashlight. Porter stood perfectly still for several moments, listening as hard as he could for any signs of life.
In the end, there was nothing. Harsh was standing next to the BMW’s passenger door.
Porter leaned against the trunk, feeling the thumps as the imprisoned Pavel feebly banged away from the inside. Porter’s mind raced, trying to think of a million things at once. Was Rivera okay? Where was Osito? Could he trust Harsh? Would anybody see what he was going to do to Pavel?
Round and round things went until he shook his head and stepped away from the BMW, back to the sedan and its glove box. Inside were the brass knuckles he’d taken from Camelot Jones, Rivera’s purse, and the revolver she’d taken off of Osito the night before. He slammed the door, then popped the trunk of the BMW and was back in front of it before it had a chance to fully open.
He pushed the metal lid the rest of the way up.
Pavel was inside, staring up, his face misshapen from the pounding Harsh had given him. He moved as if to escape, but froze when Porter leveled the big revolver at the man’s face.
“You never apologized.”
Pavel tried to speak through a broken jaw, but just slurred his words.
“For what? For shooting my friend.”
Pavel continued slurring.
“If you apologize, I won’t shoot you in the face and kill you right now.”
Pavel searched for the structure in his mouth, and managed to dribble out a feeble, “Promise?”
“I don’t lie. I won’t shoot you if you just say you’re sorry, you piece of shit.”
Harsh stood with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing, observing everything.
“No shoot me?”
“No. I think it’s a waste of money,” Porter said as he held up the Python. “Rounds for this big bitch are like a dollar apiece.”
Pavel put his hands in front of his chest, and held his hands together, like he was praying. Praying to anyone who’d listen to stop this angry monster looming over him in the dark. “I’m sorry.”
“I believe you,” Porter muttered. He looked at Harsh. “I believe him.”
“Pero?” But?
“That’s not gonna save his ass.” Porter leaned down, face in the trunk. “That’s not gonna save your miserable ass.”
“But you said you wouldn’t shoot.”
“I won’t. All I’m going to do is give you a time out. You need to stay in that trunk and think about what you’ve done. At least, for as long as you can breathe.”
With that, Porter slammed the trunk. He went back to the still-running car’s engine and sat in the front seat. Fortunately Harsh was no small man, so the seat was already pushed back. Porter took a deep breath, then put the car into drive and stepped out, slamming the door behind him.
The slight angle of the hill, combined with the idling inertia of the car, carried the vehicle down the rest of the grass, toward the edge of the breakwall to the river.
Porter walked after it, listening to the thumping from inside grow louder and louder. He watched as the car crept its way to the edge, spilling its way over the breakwall, a splash the only noise to be heard.
Porter put his foot on the edge, and looked down as the car bobbed nose down for several moments, then flattened out, like it had fallen through the ice on a lake. Slowly, the car took on more and more water, until it was submerged beneath the surface, the only remaining testament of its presence the stream of bubbles from the air being forced from the vehicle.
Silently, Harsh stood next to Porter, watching the entire thing, hands still in the pocket of his hoodie.
After several minutes, Porter turned to the man.
“So. Where can I find Osito?”
Thirty-Nine
It was the middle of the night, and traffic was as light as it would ever be in the city. Porter was driving the sedan, doing the speed limit, as was smart for a man in a car he didn’t own.
The conversation with Harsh about Osito’s location started with one word. Harsh said simply: “Poker.”
“Poker what?”
“Osito juega poker.” Osito plays poker.
“When?”
“Dos o tres veces a la semana.” Two or three times a week.”
“And tonight’s one of the nights?”
“Sí.”
“What about the fact that he’s all shot up? It’s late, he’s hurting—how can you be sure he’s not at the house sitting on the couch watching a Marc Anthony concert?”
“He’s not,” Harsh said, like that ended the conversation.
Porter ignored the man and kept driving.
The GPS coming from the tinny speaker on his phone gave directions, which Porter dutifully followed. However, when the GPS told him to find the destination half a mile up on the left, Porter deferred.
Instead, he hung back, driving from street to street on the perimeter of the building until he found a small parking lot. Porter pulled in and turned the car off.
“Qué?” What?
“In your version of this, we just go knock on the door where Osito is running an illegal card game and ask him to come outside and play?”
Harsh didn’t answer.
“If we have a chance in hell of pulling this thing off, I’m going to have to get an idea of what we’re working with.” Porter looked back to his phone and clicked on the address, bringing up a map in Google and pulling up the street view.
Based on what Porter could see, it would be most accurately described as a bodega. New York had hundreds of the small shops, where people could buy the same things that a person in the suburbs would run to the convenience store to get. This one was on the corner of the street, attached to a public laundromat.
Porter worked the view all around the five-story brick building, and saw a back entrance on a smaller street, and the main one next to the larger road. He held up the phone to Harsh and looked out the window at a homeless man shuffling by, wearing a dirty hat and poncho. “This the place?”
Harsh nodded.
“How many people are usually in there?”
“No sé.” I don’t know.
“What do you mean?”
“Diferente cada semana.” Different every week.
“What’s the most you ever seen?”
Harsh was quiet for a few moments. “Trenta? Trenta y cinco?”
“Thirty-five?” Porter said.
“Más o menos.” More or less.
“You’re out of your mind,” Porter said. “There’s no way that taking on thirty-five guys is the best we can come up with. This is a no-go.” Porter was quiet for a few moments. “What time does the game let out?”
Harsh pointed to the dashboard clock, which read nearly two a.m. “Dos o tres horas.”
“At least we have a little time,” Porter said. He put the car in drive and slowly crept the three blocks to the bodega. As he drew closer, the cars lined up on the side of the road got nicer and nicer. Porter was no aficionado, but he could recognize the Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar emblems.
As the bodega sat on a corner, the street he was on passed by the front entrance, so Porter turned left, putting the bodega on his right, the side of the building windowless and doorless. The first car in the row was a blacked-out Town Car.
“Allá.” There.
“What? Is that Osito’s?”
Harsh nodded in the dashboard lights.
“At least it’s not parked in front of the window,” Porter said.
He made a big loop around the block, and finally drove past the front of the bodega, the shop on his right side as he did. In the frosted window, there were an untold number of bodies, backlit by the light of the store, silhouetted for anyone who wanted to see them. There was no real way to tell how many, but Porter no longer thought Harsh’s estimate of thirty or thirty-five was too far off the mark.
Porter drove Rivera’s sedan toward his original parking place, far enough away from the front that the car wouldn’t be seen.
He leaned his head against the cool window and was quiet for a few moments. “Is this the best place to get him?”
“Menos… cómo se dice…” Less… how do you say it?
“Say what?”
“Fortificado?”
Porter muttered the word to himself a couple of times. “Fortified?”
“Exactamente.” Exactly.
“I’d hate to see what his house is like.”
As usual, Porter’s mind was racing, always running a thousand miles an hour, his cool exterior belying the calculations that were always going in his head. He was often complimented as being a good judge of people, or being able to read people and situations well. If this was true, it was because his mind was always crunching all the available information it had at any given time, in the background of his consciousness.
He found this to be a useful talent.
As it stood, despite the vastness of the numbers Osito presented and the horrible tactical situation, Porter began to craft a plan. A small one, at first, like a grain of sand in an oyster shell. Over the next few minutes, however, he heaped more sand onto the idea, and strengthened it, using what he knew about people and human nature. “This is a shit sandwich.”
“Qué?”
“Sandwich de mierda,” Porter said.
For the first time, Harsh barked out a laugh. “Gracioso.” Funny.
“I have an idea. Not great, but it is what it is. You want to hear?”
Harsh nodded.
Thirty seconds later, Porter was finished. He was reminded of an Einstein quote that basically said if you can’t explain something to a six-year-old, then you don’t understand it yourself.
Porter wondered if he understood his plan that well, or if it was a plan that was only worth thirty seconds in general. He hoped the former.
Harsh nodded. “It’s good.”
“Okay.”
Porter put the car in drive again. This time, he drove straight by the front of the bodega, trying not to look at the number of silhouettes that were still there.
He kept going until he found what he was looking for: the homeless man from earlier.
Porter pulled over to the sidewalk as the man shuffled about his business. “Hey, buddy.”
“I’m not holding. You gotta get you a fix somewhere else.”
“I’m not trying to buy anything… except your hat and poncho. Maybe the rest of whatever’s in the bottle in your brown bag.”
“My hat? I like my hat,” the man said.
“I’m sure you do.” Porter handed Harsh a one-hundred-dollar bill to give to the man. “What about now?”
“I don’t like this hat much anymore,” the man said. “I never really liked the Giants anyway. Buncha choke artists. Especially that Manning kid.” He pulled the hat off, his balding head exposed and his out-of-control side hair sticking up all over the place. He dropped the hat in Harsh’s lap.
Harsh made a face and Porter tried not to laugh.
“What about that poncho?”
“Ain’t no poncho. It’s a cape.”
“A cape?” Porter said.
“Yeah, a cape. How am I gonna fight crime if I ain’t got my cape?”
Porter handed over another hundred. “Spiderman didn’t have a cape and he did fine.”
“You got a point,” the man said. He shrugged off his poncho, wadding it up and stuffing it into Harsh’s lap. “I don’t need this to fly.”
“Don’t forget the bottle,” Porter said.
“Ha. Joke’s on you. Thing’s damn near empty.” The homeless man dropped the bottle on the piled-up poncho, then hurried off, as if Porter would renege on the whole deal based on the volume of liquid left in the forty.
“Sucio.” Dirty.
Porter laughed for a moment, then stopped when he realized he’d be the one wearing the newly acquired items.
He drove back to the parking spot that was beginning to feel like his home away from home. He and Harsh got out of the car. Porter slid the poncho on over himself, nearly gagging at the smell. While the poncho wasn’t quite the dress it had been on the man, it was plenty big enough for Porter.
He was going to bankrupt the Hilton when he got back to the room. The amount of water he’d use to shower would put them out of business.
Harsh held out the hat.
Porter shook his head. “I’m not wearing that.”
Harsh held it up higher.
“Nope.”
Harsh reached over and put it on Porter’s head. The smell circuit was complete, and Porter couldn’t tell what was body odor and what was sour head sweat.
Porter shook his head and reached into the glove box and pulled out Camelot’s set of brass knuckles, slipping them into his pocket. He kept Osito’s big revolver tucked in his waistband as well.
Harsh handed him the bottle.
“Thanks,” Porter said sarcastically. He looked at his newfound ally. “So, you got it?”
“Sí.”
“Don’t leave me hanging, or I’ll be pissed.”
“Entiendo.” I understand.
With that, Porter shuffled off into the night, adopting the gait of the homeless man. One more person the city had forgotten about. One more person its citizens would ignore and look past.
Forty
Porter shuffled away from Rivera’s sedan, hoping that Harsh had understood the plan well enough that he didn’t strand Porter when the time came. With Harsh it was hard to tell.
It wasn’t that Porter made the mistake of thinking the man was dumb because he spoke poor English. He knew better. Plenty of brain surgeons and rocket scientists spoke no English.
No, it was his demeanor. How quiet he was. The blank look on his face most of the time. Porter wasn’t sure if the man was like a duck—calm on top with legs furiously paddling beneath the surface—or if he was just slow. Regardless, it was too late to worry about that now.
Several times during the walk, the smell threatened to overwhelm him, but he managed to hold everything together. He was on the opposite side of the street, hat pulled low, looking at the bodega. He could hear the men talking and laughing, the sounds of a poker game in full swing.
He took his time to cross the street and walk past the bodega’s window, staying on the side of the building, heading toward what Harsh had identified as Osito’s car.
The Town Car was shiny underneath the streetlight, and Porter looked at it for a moment. Then he slowly turned a three-sixty, looking for any prying eyes. There was a row of townhouses that ran from the back of the bodega all the way down the street. No lights were on in any of them, and three had for-sale signs on their stoops.
Satisfied he wasn’t being watched, Porter pulled his Spyderco knife and forcefully stabbed it into the sidewall of the front driver’s side tire. When he pulled it out, a loud hiss sprang out, and a minute later the tire was flat.
The Town Car sagged toward the deflated tire, and Porter stepped back to admire his handiwork. One flat tire would have been enough to delay Osito. Still, Osito was a prick, and Porter was having a hard time being objective.
He popped the rest of the tires in turn. Overkill, but it made him feel better.
With that, he stepped away from the Town Car, and as he drew further away from the street, the overhead light illuminated him less and less. By the time he sat on the stairs of an available townhome, he was cloaked in darkness.
Now, he would wait.
His patience lasted all of five minutes. Porter slid his phone out and Googled a phone number, then was shunted from place to place until he got connected to who he was looking for.
“Davis.”
“Hi, Nurse Davis, it’s—”
“I recognize your voice.”
“How is she?”
“Which one? There are two shes here that you know.”
“The one who was shot.”
“I don’t really know right now. I’m in the ICU, remember? Last I checked was sometime after you disappeared. She was out of surgery and stable. Doped up and sleeping.”
