Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (20 page)

Then we’d wait until shift change.
Just after the new sentries came out, while there were four of them there,
Terry would repeat the performance. My thought was that with four, at least
one guy would come after him. Even two would be okay. He goes around the
corner, one or two of them follow. Right into an ambush from Angelo and his
torpedoes.

If there was one, they’d snatch
him. Two, they’d kill one and snatch the other one.

And if they didn’t come after
Terry, we’d try it again the next shift change. We’d have about five
chances to catch somebody before sunrise.

Twenty minutes after we got there,
Eichhorn said, “Shift change.”

I lifted the radio to my mouth.
“Red Cloud, this is Crazy Horse. Fresh meat, repeat, fresh meat. The bird
will fly in one hour on my mark.”

“Okay, Crazy Horse,” Angelo said.
“Just say when.”

I checked my watch. Six o’clock.
Terry would go at seven.

At a quarter to seven, I relieved
Eichhorn. I wanted to see what the reaction was for myself.

Neither of the sentries looked
familiar, like those I’d seen Friday night before Pirelli and Brewster
grabbed me. But it was hard to tell. In this cold, both were bundled up
with bulky coats, hats and hoods. I’d be hard pressed to even recognize
Schleu in the unlikely event she decided to pull sentry duty.

Seven o’clock. I lifted the radio
to my lips, pressed the button and said, “Red Cloud, Crazy Horse. Let him
loose.”

I stuck the radio in my coat pocket
and raised the binoculars. The sentries were stamping their feet and
hunched inside their coats, barely watching the street.

“Hey,” I heard through the open
window from Terry on the street below.

That got their attention. Both
jerked and turned to their left. From the angle, it looked like Terry was
maybe fifty feet down the sidewalk, halfway between the Floresta and the
corner.

“Them coats look nice and warm,”
Terry shouted. “Why don’t ya bring one over here. I’ll give you a buck for
it,
amigo
.”

“Why don’t you come over and get
it, beaner,” one of the sentries yelled back.

“Maybe if you throw in a fuck with
your sister, I will,” Terry replied, laughing.

One of the sentries started to pull
a rifle from under his coat, but the other put his hand on the guy’s
shoulder and said something. They seemed to argue briefly, and then the guy
let the rifle hang back under his coat.

“I’ll be back in a little while,
pendejo
,” Terry called. “Think about it. It’s a buck, and if you’re
already fuckin’ your sister, I’ll take your mom instead.”

The one who’d gone for the rifle
started forward, but the other guy grabbed him and said something to
him.

Terry laughed. And apparently went
back around the corner.

They stared in the direction of the
corner for a few minutes, then talked a little more and went back to
stamping and huddling and watching the street.

It was clear that Terry had gotten
to at least one of the sentries. That was good. When Mr. Sensitive wasn’t
locked into sentry duty, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance he’d chase
Terry after round two.

I lifted the portable radio. “Red
Cloud, Crazy Horse. Give the bird a treat and have him stand-by. Showtime
in an hour.”

“We’ll be ready,” Angelo
said.

I handed the binoculars to Alfie.
Figured I’d give the kid something to do. “You stand here,” I said. “You
watch. If they do anything other than what they’re doing right how, you let
me know.”

“Got it,” he said, raising the
binoculars to his eyes. “Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Welles. I
appreciate it.”

“Mr. Werkle doesn’t let you get out
much, huh.”

He shook his head. “No, Poppa’s
kind of...” He hesitated for a moment. “I guess protective. He doesn’t want
anything to happen to me.” He paused. “Not that it really matters. It’s not
like I’m ever going to be sitting behind his desk. He’ll still be there,
even if I live to be a hundred.”

“Did he ever offer...” I wasn’t
sure how to phrase it.

“To turn me into a bloodsucker?”
Alfie laughed softly. “No, he doesn’t want that for me. I don’t even think
he likes it, not really. He used to love his meatballs and gravy on
Sundays, or going down to Florida and spending a week on Miami Beach.” He
paused. “Even if he did look like a beached whale.” Another pause. “The
beach isn’t the same at night, Mr. Welles, and now the only gravy he gets
is blood. All he does is sit behind his desk with the curtains closed and
sip blood from a teacup.”

Boo-hoo. Everybody had a sad story
after the war. Even Vees.

I slapped Alfie on the shoulder.
“Just keep a good watch, huh.”

“I will, Mr. Welles,” he
said.

I wandered back to the kitchen and
watched Eichhorn and Pirelli play gin rummy for a few minutes. Either
they’d brought the cards with them, or Schleu’s guys had left them behind
when they cleaned out the apartment.

But I was too antsy to stand there
for long, so I walked down the hall and checked out the rest of the
apartment. A couple of rooms, probably bedrooms, and the room with the
trapdoor. A bathroom. I pressed the handle on the toilet and was surprised
to see that the plumbing still worked. I guess shutting off the water to
abandoned apartments wasn’t high on the list of city priorities.

There was always a lot of waiting
on surveillance jobs, but rarely a payoff at the end, at least on the
private side of the street. Occasionally I’d watch and follow, then grab a
bail jumper or missing kid and haul them over to Downtown District station.
But usually it was just a lot of watching, then reporting what I saw to the
client.

When I’d been a Robbery-Homicide
cop here on the east side, it had been different, more like this. Watching,
waiting, then making an arrest. The antsy feeling was an old friend I
hadn’t heard from in a while.

I was sitting on the edge of the
trapdoor, my feet on the stairs when Eichhorn leaned around the open door.
“Shift change,” he said.

“Red Cloud, this is Crazy Horse,” I
said into the radio as I followed Eichhorn into the living room. Pirelli
was there too, standing next to Alfie. “Let him loose.”

Alfie handed me the
binoculars.

The four sentries were in a huddle
at the top of the steps. Mr. Sensitive was jerking his thumb back over his
shoulder, toward the street. Probably telling the new arrivals about the
stupid spic kid.

Then I heard Terry’s voice. “Hey,
gringo, your momma ready for some sweet brown dick?”

The four people at the top of the
steps turned as one and stared off to my right.

“Why don’t you have her bring that
coat over with her,” Terry continued. “I’ll send her back with the dollar.
It won’t take long. I’m just gonna put her up against a wall and shove it
up her ass.”

Terry was hitting all the bases. I
would have thought he was a good actor, but he was such a piece of shit
that it probably came naturally.

Mr. Sensitive came down the steps.
“Why don’t you wait right there, boy,” he called. “I’ll bring that dollar
to you myself.”

“Guess you don’t wanna waste my
fine dick on momma,” Terry replied with a laugh. “Sure, I’ll let you blow
me for a buck.”

The guy broke into a run. “Red
Cloud, you got one incoming,” I said into the radio.

“Ready,” Angelo replied.

Mr. Sensitive’s partner shook his
head and started after him.

“Make that two,” I said, keying the
radio mic.

“Got it.”

The two new sentries watched, but
didn’t move. One of them was laughing.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I
said.

The ball was in play, and my part
was done. It was all up to Angelo now.

Chapter
Thirteen

“No problems?” I asked.

“None. It was good,” Angelo
said.

He was next to me in the front seat
of the Jeep, with Eichhorn, Pirelli, and Alfie crammed together in the
back. The torpedoes and their prize followed us in a big black
sedan.

“Terry made sure the guy chasing
him came around the corner and could see him, then ducked into that little
alcove where we were waiting. The guy ran in. We slugged him good and one
of the guys hit him with the chloroform. His buddy was right behind.”
Angelo paused. “Ran into a shiv. Couple of hits to the body and we jammed
it into his throat, just to make sure.”

“Where’s the body now?”

“In the trunk,” Angelo said. He was
silent for a moment, then added. “Along with Terry Legs.”

I glanced over at him.

“Don Alfredo’s orders,” he said.
“Terry lost his protection when Ralphie Suarez got iced.”

“At least he went out on a high
note.”

“Yeah, even a
mortadella
like Legs can doing something worthwhile with his life.”

Even if it was the last thing he
did. “You got plans for the bodies when we’re done?”

Angelo lifted his hand to his mouth
in a drinking motion.

“I have a better idea, assuming
Werkle’s Vee soldiers aren’t planning to eat fresh tonight,” I said. “We
need to make sure that Schleu knows who did this, that she thinks it’s just
payback for Brewster. That way she doesn’t change her routine, at least not
till after whatever’s she has planned for Christmas Eve. So we return ‘em.
The two sentries. Same way she returned Eichhorn and Brewster.”

“Makes sense, if Don Alfredo will
go along with it,” he said. “What about Legs?”

“
Bon appétit
, “I
said.

Behind me, Eichhorn
laughed.

When we went passed the gatehouse
at Lakeside Glen, I saw that Werkle had beefed up security. There was a
second guard there, and both were carrying M-16s instead of the small
submachine gun the solitary guard carried.

Three guys waited under the portico
of Werkle’s house. When the black sedan pulled up behind us, they hurried
to the back door, opened it and pulled out the semi-conscious prisoner.
They half-dragged, half-carried him around the side of the
house.

“Where are they taking him?” I
asked Angelo as he got out of the Jeep and joined me.

“Woodshed,” he said. He turned to
Eichhorn, Pirelli, and Alfie, who were just climbing out of the back seat.
“Good work, guys. Go get warmed up and have something to eat.”

“What’s the woodshed?”

Angelo smiled. “Don Alfredo’s
special place,” he said. “You’ll see.”

The young valet came out of the
house and got behind the wheel of the Jeep. As he pulled away, Angelo said,
“Come on.”

Werkle’s house had a spacious back
yard, and it looked nicely-landscaped in the cold light of the nearly-full
moon. Right in the middle of the hedges, bushes and trees was a small
square blockhouse with a single door and no windows. That, I guessed, was
the woodshed.

Angelo opened the door and I
stepped in. To one side, the three guys were stripping the clothes off the
semi-conscious prisoner, who I recognized as Mr. Sensitive. He was a wiry
kid, maybe late-twenties, with short curly hair and a lot of stubble on his
face.

But it was what was in the middle
of the small, concrete-block room that caught my attention.

When I’d been investigating my
partner’s murder, I’d put the screws to a corrupt cop named Holstein in an
interrogation room in Uptown District station. In the middle of the
interrogation room was a large, throne-like wooden chair, clearly an old
electric chair taken from a state prison execution chamber.

If I wasn’t mistaken, the chair in
the middle of the woodshed was the same chair. I looked at the left arm of
the chair. There was a shallow nick in the wood. About where Holstein’s
left hand was that night. Another longer, shallow furrow across the slats
at the back of the chair. About where Holstein’s neck was.

Both left by a Japanese short
sword. One wielded by Miss Takeda, commander of the Security
Force.

The three guys threw Mr. Sensitive
into the chair. He’d been stripped down to his grayish boxer shorts. They
quickly adjusted the thick leather straps. A couple across his forearms.
One at each ankle. Two across his chest. His head was still down, chin
resting just above the top chest strap.

Behind me, the door opened and
Werkle came into the room. He clapped his hands and said, “Okay, let’s turn
this
strunz
inside out.” He glanced at me. “What do you think,
Charlie?”

“Impressive,” I said. “Where’d you
get the chair?”

He laughed. “Police auction last
summer. Mario heard about the auction and knew I’d get a kick out of it. He
was bidding against some asshole who wanted to put it in a museum or
something. Mario had a word with him, he stopped bidding, and it only cost
me three yards.”