Godsend 6: All Jokes Aside (5 page)

“West Cide” tattoo on his lower back.

Echo met Travis at the steps of the motel. “Excuse me, sir. Have you seen this person?” He handed a photo of Kiandra to him.

Travis looked at the photo and thought he recognized the woman. When he looked up again, Echo was slamming a forearm against his face. Travis hit the concrete, dazed.

Echo glanced around. The snow was falling with larger flakes. “Get the fuck up and keep your hands out at all times where I can see them.” He pushed the barrel of a handgun—actually the tip of the silencer—against the man’s right eye. When Travis got up, Echo pulled the gun back and held it under his leather coat. “Pick that picture up and look at it again.”

Travis slowly followed the orders. “I don’t recognize her. Never seen her before.”

“That’s good. Now pull out the keycard to get in your room, but if you go for that gun I know you got, I’mma splat your ass something terrible.” With his peripheral, Echo noticed a few people heading toward the parking lot but they weren’t paying any attention to him and Travis.

Travis tried to give the keycard to the gunman.

Echo said, “You keep it. Let’s go back to your room so I can work on your fucked up memory. Keep them damn hands out where I can see them, or you gonna see the real Crip walk when the gun go off. And if you think I won’t bust one in your ass while out here in the open, say it now and I’ll put one in your brain then go fuck the woman in that photo.”

Three minutes later they were in Travis’ room. Echo closed the door and said, “Strip down to your underwear but move like you got arthritis.”

“Why you wanna see another man in his underwear? What’s this got to do with the woman in the picture who I don’t even know?” Echo shot at the man’s left forearm.

“Oh shit!” Travis snatched his arm back. The bullet had penetrated the sleeve of the thick coat but had barely missed his arm. “Chill out, man. I’m taking my shit off.”

Echo heard a certainly type of knocking at the door. He backed up to it and opened the door for Kiandra.

She watched Travis undress, and after several seconds, she gathered his clothes and gun and placed them in the bathtub. When she returned, she studied him as he stood near the bed wearing only boxer shorts.

Echo stood by the door then decided to turn on the flat-panel television.

She had his ID in her hand. “Is Travis your real name, or is this shit fake?”

“That’s my name.”

“You remember a few months ago when your boss raped me after you and his other flunky forced me to go to his room?” “Lady, you got the wrong guy.”

She stepped back and said, “It’ll come to you in a minute.” Echo walked up to him and unexpectedly drove a knee to the man’s nuts, the force briefly lifting him off his feet.

Travis coughed and fell to the floor, holding his groin with both hands.

Echo said, “If you don’t or can’t give me the details about the rape, she’s cutting your dick off—just the head—after I cuff your ass and hold you down. Then, I’mma let you up and force you to stomp the head. We’re gonna repeat the process with your nuts, too.”

“Alright, I remember. It was at the Gold Creek Inn in Whittier.”

TRAVIS HAD CALLED Avery Ross to his room, another one of Breno’s gun hands. Avery arrived at the door with no coat and no weapon because Travis was supposed to be showing him something he’d found thirty minutes ago. The 26-year-old black man knocked at Travis’ room door and said, “Open the door, fool. I hope you found some pussy.

Hurry up. It’s cold as shit out here.”

Echo stopped peeping from the window curtain and stepped over to the door. He turned the door knob then flung the door open, surprising Avery. He shot the man in the stomach. When Avery doubled over in pain, Echo gripped a handful of his small afro and pulled him inside. He closed the door and watched as the man slowly dropped to his knees.

Travis was a few feet away but looked on silently.

Echo said, “I got more questions for you, Travis, but I don’t want you to even think about lying.”

He kicked Avery in the face so hard, the impact actually smashed teeth in and resulted in a broken neck. As the man lay awkwardly Echo looked at Kiandra, but she was still watching Travis at gunpoint. Echo leaned over Avery, pushed the silenced gun barrel in his mouth, and blew the back of his head out.

Travis turned away.

Kiandra put the gun to Travis’ head and said, “Look at your boy. You’re a tough-ass Crip with gangster tattoos and a gun. I know damn well you ain’t spooked about a little blood and a dead body.” But there was more than a little blood in the room. A growing puddle. Splatter on the bed spread, two walls, Travis’ face and body, Echo and Kiandra’s clothes.

Echo said to Travis, “You look like an honest person now. Let’s talk about Breno. Why the fuck is he here at Lake Tahoe with his two main Crip members?”

“He lost his transporter, so he came here to pick up.” “Pick up what?”

“Drugs. Ecstasy.”

Echo said, “Ohhh, so I’m about to stick him for a nice chunk of change?’

Travis didn’t even want to glance at Avery. “Nah. We met his connect out at Heavenly Mountain yesterday. He’s a big-shot white boy who ski on the slopes there. He came down from Vegas. Breno already got the drugs.”

“I don’t fuck with drugs. How much he spent on that shit?”

“About $225,000.”

“Damn, that’s three Godsend fees.” Echo looked at Kiandra. “You want the drugs?”

She said, “Down to the last milligram. Sheree can find a buyer for all of it at once.”

Echo said to Travis, “Okay. This is your lucky day. Get us Breno and you get to live. How do you get him to his room without making him suspicious?”

“I can’t. He won’t leave his room unless me and Avery are with him, so if I try to get him he’ll know something ain’t right and you’ll end up killing me.”

Kiandra said, “His cell phone is in his girlfriend’s name, but did she come here with him?”

“Nah. Just the three of us in two different cars.” She said, “The drugs are in the car or in his room?” “With him in a blue and gray duffle bag.”

Echo said, “What reason would you have to visit him this early in the morning?”

Travis looked at his watch. “He sent me to get some breakfast for him, but he’s gonna expect me to call him on my way back. He’ll wanna know if I noticed anything that looks like the feds are paying attention.”

BRENO RILEY LAY IN BED toward the food end, waiting for Travis to return with breakfast. Too paranoid to listen to the television or radio, he wasn’t really enjoying his stay in South Lake Tahoe. But then again, this wasn’t a vacation or a leisure trip. He believed he had slipped the DEA’s watch zone to make a pickup, but he was still suspicious of everything and everybody.

Breno was a 30-year-old handsome black man with low waves in his head. A dedicated Crip member and leader in the Whittier area. Six-six in height, 230 pounds, armed and extremely dangerous. He had a Mac-10 machine gun and a Beretta 9mm handgun in the room with him, and not just because he had a black duffle bag full of drugs next to his bed.

His cell phone rang. He picked his Blackberry up from the floor, glanced at the screen, then answered it. “What’s the deal, Trav?”

Travis said, “I just picked your food up. Two scrambled eggs, no bacon, tater tots, raw berries, and a chicken and cheese croissant.” Breno was on his feet now, heart pounding in his chest. He’d ordered pancakes and sausage, but he was very much familiar with Travis’ menu. He said, “Good looking out.”

Travis said, “Oh, yeah, and some orange juice.” Echo said to Travis, “Get up. Let’s go.”

Kiandra watched Travis get up from the floor of his motel room. She was thinking about something.

Echo was near the door again. “When we get to Breno’s door, I want you to—”

Kiandra held up a hand. “Wait a minute. We just got played.” Echo said, “Played how?”

“He called back Breno’s order and said ‘no bacon.’ That doesn’t make sense. If Breno didn’t order bacon why would be tell Breno he didn’t get bacon?”

Echo shrugged. “You think he was talking in code?”

“Possibly. And another thing: Travis said Breno will want to know if he spotted any signs of the feds. Breno didn’t ask him anything and you know why? Because I’m sure Travis told him everything he needed to know.”

Echo looked at Travis. “That’s a muthafuckin good point. What the fuck did you tell Breno?”

Travis stared at Echo, stalling for time, knowing the man had no intentions of letting him live.

Kiandra suddenly poked him in the mouth with the tip of her silencer busting a lip and loosening three teeth. When he stumbled two steps backwards, she said, “This is going to be a slow death.” She aimed at his crotch area and said, “Last chance.”

Travis said, “I told Breno that two people, not the police, got gats and gonna rob him. Look for a bitch and a serious nigga. And as for the orange juice, I was telling him to pull an OJ and run. Like this.” He turned away from her and dashed off as fast as he could toward a wall, throwing himself into it, shoulder first, damn near entering the adjacent room.

Even though a woman in the next room began screaming, Kiandra rushed up to Travis and unloaded seven shots in the sneaky bastard.

Echo said to Kiandra, “Get your ass out of here.” He slipped on his skully knit cap and pulled it down to his eyes. “Wait for me at the last place we filled up for gas. I’m going after Breno’s ass. If I don’t show up an hour after you get there, keep it moving and forget about me. I’m about to draw some attention, so make sure you move like a scared tourist.”

ECHO RAN DOWN the outdoor stairs and reached the second floor. He ran up to Room 241, elbowed the window in and snatched the curtains down. He fired two shots inside but quickly realized that Breno was gone. No reason to think he’d be in the bathroom after the warning Travis had given him. Echo looked around and noticed maybe twelve people watching him now. His gun was still silenced, so they’d obviously heard the window breaking; some had even heard the commotion and the screaming that had been on the third floor.

Kiandra eased from the room and headed for the stairs.

Echo knew where Breno had parked and what he had driven. Travis said they had traveled in two cars, but Echo had flattened two tires on Breno’s girlfriend’s car earlier this morning. What the fuck could Breno be driving now?

Echo reached the other side of the motel, fleeting down the stairs to the first floor, and sprinted to the side parking lot. Breno’s car was still there, and the footprints in the snow told Echo that Breno had recently been as far as the driver’s door and had kept going in another direction, behind the hotel and toward the organized line of trees. Echo followed the tracks, hauling ass, gun still in his hand. Through the trees he could see the Fat Pond Cafe, and several other commercial establishments, on Lake Tahoe Boulevard. The gigantic lake was on the other side of the boulevard.

A light snow was coming down as Echo’s buckskin Polo boots impressed a new set of tracks. When he reached the other side of the trees Breno’s tracks were still visible, but Echo stopped in the rear parking lot of the café and looked around. To his far right he saw a black

1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee leaving the lot. The tires has no chains and occasionally they would slip and spin in the snow. The driver was a black man, but Echo couldn’t tell if he was Breno.

Then Echo noticed something as he began to hear police sirens maybe a mile away. The driver’s window was down in the Cherokee, which made no sense during snow flurries and forty-degree weather. Unless the window was stuck or had been recently broken. Echo ran to catch up with the Cherokee but soon saw that he was losing the race. He stopped and thought about shooting at the vehicle, knowing that that wouldn’t stop a damn thing sixty years ahead and counting.

Echo turned around and ran up to the front end of a parked Nissan Pathfinder SUV. An elderly white man was in the driver’s seat, about to pull out. Echo rushed around to the front passenger’s side and aimed his gun at the driver as he pulled on the door handle.

Locked.

Echo said, “Open the door or take a head shot.”

The 68-year-old slender man unlocked the door from the driver’s side.

Echo jumped in and closed the door. “There’s a black Cherokee Jeep up ahead. Catch up with it.”

The old man eased the Pathfinder out of the parking lot then picked up speed. He said, “I can get out and let you drive if you want.”

“You’re doing fine. I might need to use my right hand when you catch that Cherokee. If I put you out, you’ll call the cops and they’ll look for this vehicle sooner that I want them to.”

The old man was now speeding down Lake Tahoe Boulevard, at least as fast as possible under the snowy conditions. The main roads had been cleared starting at 5:45 this morning, but the light snow was starting to add up to a thin blanket. “My name’s Jacob Truesdale. I don’t suppose you wanna tell me yours.”

Echo said, “I’ll call you Old Man and you can call me Young Fella. Now switch lanes and get behind that van.”