The Blackmail Club (10 page)

Jack felt the warmth of the man’s throaty whisper against the back of his head, and smelled fetid breath sneaking below his collar. “Straighten up and walk,” the voice commanded. From the location of the voice, Jack estimated the man to be at least four inches taller than him, which would put the guy around six-six. Then the hand gave him a healthy push in the direction of the alley off to one side of the lot. As he twisted from the push, he saw the hood of a black Escalade, the inside dome light illuminating its tinted windshield. The next push put the dark Cadillac out of view. Then he heard a car door close. He thought it was the Escalade because car doors sound tighter than the doors on vans.

The talker held the short chain between the cuffs higher than Jack’s arms would comfortably tolerate, so he walked on the balls of his feet to slacken the pressure. From their footsteps he figured his greeting party had three members. Maybe four if whoever got out of the Escalade was involved.

When they got into the alley, Jack took a hard downward blow to the side of his head. He stayed up for a moment, and then dropped to one knee. He was immediately yanked back onto his feet.

“Get up,” said one of the men from behind. “I thought you was a tough PI. Like on T.V.” The remark was followed by enough laughter to confirm there were two men behind plus the one he could see in front. The two behind were close. He sensed they were the size of port-a-potties.

He felt a warm trickle of blood slaloming through his hair, racing down his forehead toward his left eye. He shook his head convulsively, the blood worm turned toward his temple.

The jagged stub of a broken bulb stuck out above one of the doors in the brick building; a dank trough gutter streamed down the center of the alley.

A strong jerk on the handcuffs made him pull up like a saddle horse without so much as a whoa from the guy playing jockey.

This is where it’ll happen
.

The front thug had a huge belly, even larger shoulders and a bull neck. Jack imagined a fleshy face with deep-set eyes, but he couldn’t know. Dumbo wore a ski mask. When all you can see of a face are the eyes, it’s amazing how much they can tell about what is going on inside the person. Dumbo’s eyes filled with a here-comes-hell look. Then he tried to drive his massive fist into Jack’s navel. The fist didn’t fit, but in trying, it pushed out nearly all Jack’s air.

One of Dumbo’s support staff from behind jerked Jack’s head up by his hair, his mouth impulsively working like a goldfish orphaned to the front lawn.

The thug paused to straighten his mask, spit, and hitch up his pants. Three more rapid blows were delivered to Jack’s face before the puncher returned to his belly. Determined not to cry out, Jack bit down on his tongue. The blows continued, too many to count. Jack bit harder. His body had begun to collapse under its own weight when the next punch, up into his breadbasket, momentarily lifted him off his feet.

A mushy, acidic mess rose from the back of Jack’s throat, and somewhere in that slop his tongue found a strand of unchewed coconut. On the reswallow, it didn’t taste like pie. Pie wasn’t bitter. Pie didn’t burn. At least it hadn’t the first time down.

Somewhere during the sea of blows, Jack’s feet quit trying to keep him upright. This made the two in the back work harder to hold him up. He nearly blacked out. Maybe he actually had for a few moments now and again. He dropped onto his knees; they let him. One of them came around front to grab his shirt and lift him back up onto his feet. The lifter stood as tall as a grizzly, but had hairless arms.

Dumbo was tiring, his punches weakening. Or perhaps Jack’s senses had simply dulled sufficiently to register the blows lower on his private Richter scale. Jack longed to get in at least one blow, a blow one of them would remember.

Through blurred, swollen eyes Jack saw the now heavy-breathing puncher rear back for that little something extra. The resistance provided by being held from behind gave Jack the leverage he needed. As the front-pounder stepped forward to deliver his next sledgehammer fist, Jack raised his leg and drove the flat of his foot into the brute’s kneecap.

Dumbo screamed and folded like a circus tent. A minute later the behemoth was back on his feet.

Jack tried to smile, but his face refused.

The pachyderm shook his head as if he were shooing flies, flipped open a switchblade and with a decided limp moved forward.

“Stop,” came a voice from somewhere near. “Only a beating.”

So there is a fourth
.

When the commander stepped out from the shadows along the wall, Jack’s handlers took off the handcuffs letting him free fall into the alley’s foul-smelling center trough. He rolled over onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow. The effort caused his head to flop to one side like a rag dog, dipping his ear into the drain water.

The squaretoed boot of the one who’d emerged from the dark shadows pierced the light to deliver the final blow just above Jack’s belt. His elbow failed him. He went down. Face first.

Hairless arms, protruding from a sleeveless denim jacket, reached down and grabbed a wad of Jack’s hair. His head and shoulders came off the wet pavement, a mixture of blood and gutter water dripping from the end of his nose. Jack tasted the part trailing into his mouth. His attempt to spit failed. He tilted his head. The rancid mixture ran out.

“Drop the Andujar case or next time we’ll hand you your pecker in a paper bag.”

Chapter 15

Sounds and shadowy images crawled into Jack’s consciousness. Then a bright square appeared above him, darting in and out like a UFO using cloud cover to obfuscate its movements.

One eye—the left, he thought, began working on shapes as his vision fought the fog; then the second eye joined the effort. The bright square became a fluorescent ceiling light. The shadow turned into a large doughy doctor in scrubs moving back and forth between Jack and the light. The doc leaned close, his cheeks sagging like soft sacks of pudding.

Then Jack heard Nora’s voice. He felt her lips and damp cheek gently touching beside his sore eye. When she stepped back, he saw that there were no wires connecting him to machines and none of his limbs dangled in traction—both good signs.

“Hello, Partner,” he said. “If you’re kissing it to make it feel better, I hurt all over.”

She leaned down and softly kissed his cut lips, then next to his other eye.

“I’m going to have to get beaten up more often.”

“And in more interesting places,” Nora said.

He tried to smile, but his lips were split and swollen.

The doctor leaned back in, shined a light in Jack’s eyes and led him through the doctor game: follow the moving finger.

The doc stood tall, his pudding-sack cheeks receding, then summarized his findings: “A few bruised ribs, no broken bones.” He sprinkled his cheerful soliloquy with words like hematomas, contusions, abrasions, and sprains. “You’ll be fine, Mr. McCall. We’ll keep you here for a day or two for observation. You’ve suffered a mild concussion. Said plainly, your body has taken a hell of a licking but everything’s kept on ticking. You’re a lucky man.” He hung the chart on the foot of the bed and walked out.

That’s easy for you to say.
You didn’t take the beating.

Nora told him an anonymous call to the police had brought them to the alley. Sergeant Suggs then called her and she arrived just before the ambulance left to bring him to the hospital.

“Your keys were on the ground beside the driver’s door,” she said. “I drove your car here. It’s in visitor parking. Suggs had one of the officers follow in my car. Your Beretta wasn’t taken; it’s still hidden up under the dashboard.”

Jack managed to ask, “How did Suggs get the word?”

“I’m guessing he has a flag on your name in the department computer. That’d get him notified of anything that involved you.”

“As Max would say, oh, tis grand to be loved.”

Sergeant Suggs came in an hour later. Jack told him everything he could remember except for the guy with squaretoed boots offering to bag his pecker if he didn’t get off the Andujar case. No one is beaten up to get them to stay off a case of suicide. Had he told Suggs about the threat, Metro might well reopen their inquiry into the death of Chris Andujar. If they did that, Suggs would get anal and order Jack to back off the case.

Suggs hoped Jack might be able to connect his beating with the murder of the dumpster man, as Benny Haviland had come to be known around the station. When Jack couldn’t, Suggs left.

Jack turned his head on the pillow to face Nora. “I’ve got a note from my doctor, so I won’t be at work tomorrow.” His lips cracked when he tried to laugh. It hurt, but laughing with Nora felt good.

A nurse stuck her head in through the doorway. “You need your sleep, Mr. McCall. You can have more visitors tomorrow—which won’t be long. It’s pretty late now.”

Nora left and the nurse came back in to give him two sleeping pills which he held under his tongue while drinking the water. The nurse had left a bedside urinal. Jack had never used one and he told himself he wasn’t going to start tonight. He worked his way to the edge of the bed and stood; blood draining from his head made him dizzy. He held the foot rail until his vision cleared. His eyeballs felt gritty but worked well enough for him to find the bathroom. After flushing he glanced in the mirror. He touched his sore face, pursed his lips, and ran his tongue around inside his mouth, checking for damage, somehow he still had all his teeth. This personal checkup was less professional than the doctor’s had been, but he knew it would give him the straight dope. He had no stitches in his face, but other than that what he saw resembled a meatloaf after being kneaded to fit the pan.

With the room light off, he could see the moon duck in behind a passing cloud. Under normal conditions it would have been relaxing to watch while falling asleep, but Jack had to make a visit before he could rest.

Chapter 16

Jack left the hospital after midnight wearing his still gutter-wet pants and dank smelling sport coat over the hospital’s tie-back gown. He had been able to get his feet into his shoes, but they remained untied.

The pain was traveling fast as he slowly worked his way across the dimly lit main room in Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club. The hurt moved through him with the speed of a hamster in a wheel cage, one flash finishing and another rising to take its place. The marines had taught him more than the fundamentals of fighting and then the Special Forces honed it to a sharp point. He wasn’t fooling himself, he had lost a step just as old shortstops do, but he was still a man that smart people didn’t piss off, and he was pissed off now and not just at Dumbo and his cohorts. He had let himself be vulnerable in the parking lot; he knew better and pledged not to let it happen again. He also knew he would recover. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But he could already feel his body fighting to regain itself. Until then, his visit to see Donny would be about proving the adage that it was better to give than receive.

When he reached the bar, he eased his reliance on the cane and tried to find a comfortable position. There was none. The bartender, a woman wearing an unbuttoned leather vest open over her tanned bare chest, looked at him like he was a used car she wouldn’t want to test drive.

He loosened his jaw. “Donny Andujar, tell him Jack McCall’s here.”

Overhead and floor level spotlights illuminated three stages featuring well-coordinated women. The girls were shapely, but you could see just as much shape in any downtown restaurant at lunchtime. What brought these girls attention was not what they had, but their willingness to show what they had.

The place was crowded with a lot of men and a few women. Some men wore clothing that said they donned hard hats by day, while others wore loosened, but still-knotted ties around their necks. There were college men, and men with long hair, men with grey hair, and men with no hair. Some of the men had fat faces, or sad faces. Some sat quietly. Some hooted and hollered. There were faces with mustaches, with beards, and clean shaven.

Donny Andujar appeared in a doorway at the far end of the big room. He parted his lips just enough to insert a dark, thin cigarette. He flashed a rictus that barely wrinkled his face, and started toward Jack sided by a man with arms like draft kegs dangling from his shoulders. The steroid junky was trying to walk soldier straight, but his gimpy right leg gave him away,
Dumbo from the alley.

Donny took a long puff, then stepped beside Jack and crushed his newly lit brown in a bar ashtray. “Hello, McCall.” Smoke leaked out as he spoke.

“Donny, some guys worked me over. It was connected to what I’m doing for your mother. Can we go somewhere and talk?”

Donny jabbed his head toward the back, then told his bodyguard to help Jack. The man was massive enough that Jack could have ridden him like Sabu of the Jungle rode elephants. The bodyguard raised one arm, his shirt revealing a tattoo of a red bird with wings spread, diving below his belt.

When they got to Donny’s office, Jack paused to lean against the doorway. The big one followed Donny inside. A minute or two later Jack stepped in leaving the office door open. Donny motioned for his man to close it. When the thug passed by on his way back from closing the door, Jack drew a sap from his coat pocket and slammed it against the back of the behemoth’s head. Dumbo went down. Jack grimaced from the extra hurt, but felt good for having delivered it.

Jack had brought the six-inch, leather-wrapped sap from the glove box of his car. He had bought the weapon, popular in the 20s and 30s, as memorabilia from Sam Spade’s era. Saps had fallen out of favor in modern times but Jack had found it useful on more than one occasion.

Next, in a jerky move, Jack pulled his Beretta, ordered Donny to the far side of the room, and eased his backside against the edge of Donny’s veneer-covered desk.

“Lock the door Donny and drag Dumbo onto the tile portion of the floor.” After Donny had done that, Jack instructed Donny to set a straight-back chair over the downed man’s upper right arm, and to put another chair a few feet from Dumbo’s head. He then had Donny set a third chair six feet on the other side of his downed bodyguard, turn it backwards and straddle sit it.