NorthWest (John Hazard - Book II) (7 page)

She was staring into the open door of the medicine cabinet when a knock came at the door. She ran out of the bathroom to the kitchen area of her apartment. She was looking for some kind of a weapon. She opened the drawers frantically until she found it.

She grabbed the largest knife she owned out of the drawer, and went to the door. She boosted herself up on her toes and carefully looked through the peephole. It was Diane, and she was looking up at something above the door as she waited for Emily to answer it.

Opening the door, Emily said, “Hurry in so I can close the door!” She took Diane by the wrist, pulling her into the room.

“Okay now, Em. Now I know something is goin’ on here.” She nodded at the knife in Emily’s hand. “Please, honey, what is it?”

Shutting the door and double locking it, Emily set the knife on the table and spoke nervously, “I’ll tell you if you help me get Ralph’s things together while I finish packing.” She was already walking into the bathroom.

“Hon, now I guess his litter box and food are still in the same place as always?” Diane waited for an answer. “Emily?”

Emily stuck her head out through the doorway, “Yeah, please hurry, Diane! I don’t think I have much more time!”

“Now, you promised to tell me…” she said, walking toward the bathroom where Emily was rifling through the medicine cabinet. “Wow, honey, your place is trashed. Did someone break in here?”

Emily looked at her, as if to say, you really wanna go there? She tilted her head and took a deep breath. “Okay, Diane. This is going to sound crazy, and forgive me for continuing to pack while I tell you this, but I have about fifteen,” she looked at her watch, “…oh shit, maybe ten minutes before some really bad guys get here, and I’m afraid that if I’m here when they arrive they are going to kill me. Maybe you and Ralph, too, if you’re still here.”

“What?? We gotta call the police right now!”

“You know how long it takes the police to respond in this city, Diane! They’ll get here just in time to find our bullet riddled bodies! I don’t think we have that kind of time.” She threw a couple more items into the carry bag along with a toothbrush and some pink soap that was resting on the top of the sink by the faucet.

The phone was ringing. “Diane, just get Ralph and go! Buy him some supplies, and I’ll pay you when I get back. Please? Hurry!”

“I hate leavin ya this way. It just doesn’t seem right.” She scooped Ralph up in her arms and called over her shoulder, “You call me when you get where you’re goin and let me know you’re okay. Promise now, honey?” She turned toward Emily and crossed her heart, “Cross your heart?”

“Promise! Now go!” She rushed over to answer the phone and the voice on the other end said, “Hello, is this Emily?”

“Yes, who’s…” Then she realized how foolish she was to answer the phone.

“It’s John, John Hazard. I was just calling to see if you had decided to join us on the…”

“Yes!”

“Great, will you need someone to pick you up in the morning?”

“I need someone to pick me up right fuckin’ now!” she screamed at the cell phone she had dropped on the bed while she tried to zip the over-stuffed suitcase.

“Give me your address. I think I might be in your area right now. Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.” He started to pull over to look for the address on her résumé. He remembered the street name, but not the number.

She had to think. “225 Rockland… Apartment 2C, but you better hurry cuz I gotta get out of here in the next five minutes or I’m dead!”

“Seriously?”

“Fuck, John! Some seriously bad people are on their way here to kill me.” She picked the phone up from the bed and put it to her ear.

John knew better than to ask what was going on. His cop reflexes were kicking in. “Is there a back exit out of the building?”

“No, just a fire escape,” she said looking out the window across the room.

“Look, if someone is coming to kill you they will probably come in hard. You need to watch out your window for them, wait until they get inside the building, and then get your ass down that fire escape. I should be there any minute and I’ll meet you at the bottom. You got it? If you are not there waiting, I’ll blow the horn to let you know I’m out there.” He felt the rush of adrenalin now. John began scanning all the people he could see along the way. Maybe he could spot something suspicious.

Emily picked up the suitcase and walked toward the window that opened to the fire escape. “Right, fire escape... Shit!”

Shoving the phone in her pocket, she bent over and unlocked the window, grabbing the top latch and tried to pull it open. It was stuck! She tried several times, until finally it broke loose nearly throwing her to the floor.

She was just sticking her head out the window when she heard the slamming of car doors outside on the street. She leaned out and peeked over the rusted cast iron railing and caught a glimpse of two very large men dressed in black walking from the SUV to her apartment entrance.

“Fuck!” she whispered and began to feel more panicked as she grabbed the stuffed suitcase and hoisted it through the window onto the landing of the fire escape. She was certain that she had triple-locked her door, but unsure if it would hold up if someone was determined to break in. As she stepped through the window she prayed.

“You better be there, John. Please, God. Hurry!”

On the street below, the two thugs broke the glass on the security door and reached in to unlock it.

“Yo, what apartment was that?” one asked the other.

“2C, second floor.”

“Yeah, I know, I know! Second floor! You think I’m some kinda mook?” He turned his back to the open door and faced his alleged heckler.

“Nah, I didn’t mean…”

“Fuck you! I should pop one in ya like they did to Bobby.” He started to raise his gun.

“Come on, man. Let’s do this and get out of here. I’ll buy you a beer on the way back.” The guy held his hands out defensively.

“Beer sounds good, but I should still kick yo’ ass,” he said, turning to step through the door. They hurried up the steps and looked down the hall to find apartment 2C.

Meanwhile, John was beginning to be concerned that he might not make it to Emily in time, so he started running the red traffic lights as much as he dared, without putting anyone in danger. Even so, he hoped he wasn’t being played for a fool.

How could he know what she might be involved in? Did he really want to get mixed up in something that could make him an accomplice? Emily Sparks is an attractive woman, but attractive enough to risk doing time?

He made up his mind to chance it. If it was really bad shit, he could always throw her out of the car, right? His thoughts wandered to a previous case he’d been assigned.

A very attractive woman had killed two people with a nasty kitchen knife. The female victim’s head was completely severed, and the male was viciously stabbed through his lower jaw. After witnessing such a crime scene, he had decided that people were capable of most anything. The perpetrator in that case was a gorgeous redhead.

It only made sense to get his gun out of the glove box and put it on the seat under his leg where he could get to it quickly if necessary. This way, if he had to stop suddenly it wouldn’t slide to the floor. Now he was ready for anything.

Out in the open air of the landing, Emily struggled with the ladder and could not figure out why it wouldn’t move. She even tried standing on it. Suddenly she heard a sound from inside the apartment. Someone was trying to open the door!

Out in the hall, one of the men was on his knees staring at the lock on the door. The other pushed him, said, “Come on, man! Let’s just kick it in, for fuck’s sake!”

“Man, just give me a second!”

He stuck the shaft of the pick into the lock just as John rounded the corner onto Rockland.

As he pulled into the alley next to the building, the stark black hulk of the SUV caught his eye immediately. He could see the bottom of the old fire escape system but there was no one standing there when he arrived. He parked close to where he thought the ladder might drop, pulled the lever to pop the trunk lid and blew his horn. Then he rolled down the window, leaned out as the warm air rushed in, and looked up.

Emily was frantically trying to drop the ladder for the fire escape. He got out of the car and called up to her, just loud enough for her to hear, “There’s a latch right by your feet. Pull it!”

The ladder broke loose and dropped straight down. He cringed as it clanged to a stop about six inches from the concrete and right in front of him. Flakes of rust rained down on him. He shielded his eyes from it as he watched.

“Throw me your bags!” he hissed up at her. She was trying to manage them while climbing down the ladder.

She dropped the bag over the side of the railing and he caught it as a smaller plastic one fell out of the pocket it had been stuffed into and hit the street with a thud. As she scrambled down, he opened the trunk and threw in the bag.

Upstairs, the would-be lock picker was having no luck. “Fuck this fancy shit!” yelled the gruffer, more impatient one and kicked at the door. Bang! Again, bang! The third kick finally pulled the inner doorframe off and the thugs ran through the doorway into the apartment. Guns drawn, they checked the bedroom and the bathroom, then stood in the living room area and looked at each other, shaking their heads silently.

Finally, they noticed the breeze blowing in through the curtains and realized the window was open to the fire escape. The door kicker ran over, pushed a small table off to the side to make more room for his hulking body, and stepped through the window. He looked up through the rusted stairs, no movement. Then he leaned over the railing. The girl was in the car!

John had just put it in gear as the thug opened fire. Now, he stomped down hard on the gas and the tires screeched in response. Bullets whirred as they bounced off the pavement, ricocheting into walls and trashcans lining the alleyway.

“Shit, they’re shooting at us!” John looked down the alley as the bullets rained down around his accelerating car. “What kind of trouble are you in?” He heard a crunching sort of a sound as a slug smashed his taillight and penetrated the trunk. He reached the next street and turned sharply onto it.

A car swerved away from them as John took the corner wide, cutting into the other lane. They could hear the driver yelling as he mowed down a line of trashcans sitting on the curb awaiting pickup.

“Why is that guy trying to kill you?” John asked her after he had regained control of the car. He was focused on her and ran the red traffic light at the next intersection. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest.

“Get us out of here, and I’ll tell you every detail!” she plead with him.

“I don’t think this is over yet.” He looked in the rearview mirror as the thug’s SUV shot out of the alley a block behind them, and slammed into a wall on the opposite side of the street. “Wait a sec… yeah, it’s over for now.”

Twelve

Eddie smiled wide and leaned closer to the stage clutching a five dollar bill in his hand. He was getting ready to shove it in Karla’s garter when she got around to him. He felt a heady rush of pleasure as she grabbed the pole and pressed her self against it while sliding down to squat close to the floor. He knew this was the song that would reveal her perfect double D’s, and he wanted to soak up every last drop of her gorgeous body before she left the stage after her set.

Karla was glad that Eddie had finally arrived. She had not been having a good day with tips. At most, she figured she would have about fifty bucks left after giving the club owner and the DJ their cut of the day’s earnings. If she played him just right, she knew Eddie would easily make up about another fifty bucks all by himself. The psychology of the gentlemen’s club almost guaranteed it. 

A good tipper at the stage almost always generated a sort of competition in the audience. It was like seed money to a group of guys vying for her attention, guys who might drop a hundred bucks during three songs if she could play them right. So she intended to pull out all the stops.

She crawled toward him on her hands and knees like the feline she imagined herself to be and, when she was directly in front of him, she moved quickly to her knees. She looked Eddie directly in the eyes, gently licking her lips while she gyrated slowly up and down as if she were straddling him.

He was so predictable. She knew he would lean up and put some money in her garter, although she was never sure just how much. If she could get him really hot, she might be able to motivate him to donate everything he had in his pockets.

It was time to push him.

Right on cue, the five-dollar bill he had intended to give her was joined by a twenty. With twenty-five bucks safely tucked in her garter, she winked and blew him a kiss. She reached around behind and let the ‘girls’ loose, what Eddie called ‘the most beautiful melons ever grown in California’. Truth be told they were more manufactured than grown and were quite firm from the stretching. Eddie could have bounced a quarter off of them if he could get her naked and make her lay still.

Eddie didn’t care. He was really hot for her today and, before he knew it, he was instinctively reaching for his wallet again. Her plan, beautifully executed, was working its magic. She had him, so she did what she knew would really make him sweat. She moved on to the next guy standing next to the stage waving a twenty at her.