Blood Relations (10 page)

***

Six hours later, after nightfall, Joe was thinking, Maybe I should have shot this plan down. I could wind up getting hurt.

But when Greg had asked him if he was ready, Joe had made his voice cheerful. "Ready, willing, and eager."

They were standing at the back door. Greg shouted through the house to Mike, who was standing at the front door.

"Okay, Mike, go!"

Silently Greg and Joe counted to five in unison. Joe pictured Mike going out the front door on the run, moving as fast as Joe had seen him go on the gridiron. But now he had to dodge any bullets that might come flying at him.

"Five," whispered Greg. "Go, Joe!"

Joe moved away quickly from the back door. He hoped that Mike had managed to divert the attention of the guys watching the house. Mike then had to get back inside the house safely after pretending to abandon his attempt to break out. Then he forgot about Mike. What he had to worry about was himself as he dashed across the back lawn.

Good thing there was no moon. Still, the light from neighboring houses and a distant streetlight did give more illumination than he liked. But at least that light worked both ways. He was able to see a couple of men dashing ahead of him before they saw him.

He hit the ground and lay flat against it. The pair of men stopped nearby.

"See, I told you nobody was coming out the back door," said one, panting and trying to catch his breath.

"Lucky for you," gasped the other, sucking in air. "You were told not to abandon your post here, no matter what."

"You sounded like you needed help in front," the first said, protesting.

"That move could have been a trick," said the second. "Oldest trick in the world. That kid dashing out, drawing fire, then ducking back inside the house."

"Naw," said the first man contemptuously.

"He was just scared out of his pants. These silencers may keep the neighbors from hearing shots, but I guarantee you when he heard a few bullets whistle by, he realized real fast that this wasn't a game. That put a stop to that hero stuff.

Like the boss said, they're all amateurs in there."

"Well, he should know," said the second. "I mean, he's married to one, plays dad to the other two, and he's been like some kind of uncle to the two Hardy kids."

Lying pressed against the ground, Joe grimaced. Any doubts he had about Walter Rawley were gone now—and so was his last lingering hesitation about what he had to do.

Joe lay motionless, his muscles coiled for action, while the second crook said, "I'm heading out front again. You stay here, and keep a sharp lookout."

"Yeah, sure, but they're too scared to do anything," said the other man.

Then, after the second crook had left, Joe made his move.

He made it short and sweet.

He was on his feet and throwing a punch at the man's jaw in one lightning motion. The guy never knew what hit him. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

Joe stood over him, rubbing his knuckles.

"Good to see I haven't lost my touch," he said to himself, enjoying the same kind of triumphant feeling he had had sinking baskets in the city. Then that glow faded as he thought of the job ahead. Now comes the hard part, he thought.

Fifteen minutes later, jogging all the way, he arrived at the Rawleys' house.

Standing at the front door, he hesitated a moment, then steeled himself and pressed the buzzer.

Walter P. Rawley answered the door himself.

"Joe, what are you doing here?" he asked surprised.

"I have to talk to you—alone," said Joe, making his voice sound desperate.

"You can do that here," said Walter Rawley. "My wife's not here right now and I don't know where Greg and Mike are. Probably out in that convertible of theirs, cruising. Come on in and let's talk."

As soon as the door had closed behind him, Joe said, "Your wife and sons, I've just seen them."

"But you couldn't have," Walter Rawley said in a stunned voice. "They've been — " Then he paused.

"You don't have to keep it a secret," Joe said. "I know. They've been kidnapped. They told me."

"But how? Why?" said Walter Rawley, sounding amazed.

"Your sons got Frank and me involved in the case," Joe explained. "We found your wife and helped her escape. But your sons were captured right after. They escaped too, and they're all hiding out at Callie Shaw's house. Except that now the house is surrounded."

"But why didn't you tell me about all this before?" Walter Rawley demanded.

"This is kind of hard to say," said Joe, sounding embarrassed, "but Mrs. Rawley and Greg and Mike made us promise not to tell you. They had a crazy idea you were involved in some kind of funny business. In fact, they actually thought you were behind the kidnappings for a while. Of course, Frank and I knew better. I mean, we've known you for so much longer than they have. The idea of you being a crook is completely crazy. But we had to go along with their demand to keep you out of our investigation if we wanted to stay on the case. So we said okay. But the crooks are closing in on them now again. And I figured it was time to turn to you for help. You're the best one — the only one—to decide what to do now."

"You did absolutely right, Joe," Walter Rawley said, putting his hand on Joe's shoulder. "Good work. Your father will be proud of you when I tell him about this. But first I'll get Linda and the boys out of their jam. I'm finally free to do what I've wanted to from the very first. I'm going to call the police. You wait right here."

Joe looked into Walter Rawley's face, the gentle, kindly face he had known since he was a kid, no hint of malice or deception on it. Then Joe thought, I just bet you're going to call the cops. What a good actor you've been all these years.

Then Joe did the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

As Walter Rawley withdrew his hand from Joe's shoulder and was about to turn away to go to the phone in the living room, Joe lashed out with his right hand. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. He connected square on Walter Rawley's jaw, and the older man went down.

But Joe felt as if he were the one who had been punched—right in the stomach. He felt dizzy, almost sick.

Get hold of yourself, he told himself. Act like a pro. It had to be done. Walter Rawley was playing you for a sucker and you know it. If you hadn't knocked him out, he would have called in his goons and rubbed you out and then finished off the others.

The trouble was, knowing all this didn't make him feel any better. He had to force himself to continue with the plan, feeling sick all the while.

He reached in Walter Rawley's pocket and found his car keys. Then he frisked Rawley and found something else in his jacket pocket. A .32 automatic.

"It figures," he thought, and felt better about what he had done. The guy was deadly as a rattler.

Getting a glass of water from the kitchen, Joe splashed it in Rawley's face. When Rawley came to, he found himself staring into the barrel of his own gun.

Joe didn't like the feel of the gun in his hand. Guns definitely were not his thing. And he knew that there was no way he could ever pull the trigger on Walter Rawley, no matter what Rawley had done. Hitting Rawley was just about the hardest thing he had ever done. Shooting him was simply impossible.

But he couldn't let Rawley know that. And Joe didn't figure that Rawley would call his bluff.

All Rawley could do was assume a puzzled, confused tone. "Joe, what happened? What's wrong?"

"No talk — just do what I say or pay the price," Joe said. He made his voice menacing. He wasn't sure he'd trust himself to resist Walter Rawley, if Rawley started appealing to him.

The sight of the gun silenced Rawley. With a stunned look on his face, he let Joe march him to the car. On Joe's command, he sat in the driver's seat while Joe sat beside him.

Joe inserted the car keys, turned on the ignition, and ordered Rawley to drive to within a block of Callie's house. When they arrived, Joe made him get out. He marched him at gunpoint to where they could approach the house from the rear.

"Not a sound," Joe warned him, and Rawley nodded. He still looked stunned. Joe could see that he couldn't get over the fact that he had been outsmarted. Rawley had been playing a winning hand so long that he had forgotten what it was like to lose.

"When the guy guarding the rear spots us, just wave to him, like there's nothing wrong," Joe told him. "I'm putting the gun in the pocket of my jacket but I'm keeping the safety off and my finger on the trigger. Make one false move and it will be your last one."

"But — " Rawley started to protest.

"Save your breath, if you want to keep breathing," Joe said harshly. "Just do what I say."

Rawley shrugged and nodded his head, a defeated look on his face.

He didn't have to do a thing, though, when the thug at the rear of the house spotted them. The man moved toward them menacingly, but when he saw it was Rawley, he stood aside respectfully and let them pass.

When they reached the rear door, Joe wasn't surprised to see it swing open before he had to knock. He could imagine how the three inside must have been waiting and watching, hoping that he had pulled this off.

He saw he was right. The faces of Linda Rawley and her sons lit up with triumph as they gathered around him and his prisoner.

What Joe wasn't expecting, though, was that Walter Rawley's face would light up too.

"Linda. Greg. Mike. You're alive, thank God," he exclaimed.

"He'd make a great actor, wouldn't he, Joe?" Greg said with a sneer.

"He certainly would have fooled me," Joe admitted. "In fact, he has for all these years."

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and handed it to Greg. "You take this. You can take charge of the rest of this. I don't have the heart for it."

"Gee, thanks," said Greg. "Though actually we don't need it."

"Yeah," said Mike, pulling out a gun of his own, an imposing-looking .45.

"Still, you've made our job a little bit simpler," said Linda Rawley, smiling and lighting a cigarette while her sons leveled their guns.

"Yeah, and we'll give you a reward for your good work," said Greg, with a nasty grin turning his boyish good looks into something older and ugly. "You can have a choice. Who should we knock off first, our dear stepdad or our good pal?"