Prey (2 page)

"You always carry a shit-ass piece like this?"

"That's right."

"What for?"

"Handy for bears," Lightstone shrugged, returning the outlaw biker's calm, icy stare.

"Yeah, right," Kleinfelter chuckled. "A thirty-eight's gonna have a serious impact on a thousand-pound grizzly. Didn't anybody ever tell you about Magnums?"

"I don't like big guns," Lightstone said. "They make too much noise, and they don't fit in my boot."

Brendon Kleinfelter gave him an evil smile, then tossed the handgun back to Lightstone, who fielded it one-handed, then slid the still-loaded weapon back down into his boot holster. The rest of the search turned up nothing of interest.

Kleinfelter opened another door, and Lightstone entered a smaller warehouse. A dozen people, most of whom Lightstone recognized from the bar, were surveying at least a hundred and fifty military ammo crates with rope handles on the sides. Standing next to a small stack of the ammo crates were the two clean-cut newcomers. The one who looked like a cop was holding a small crowbar in his gloved right hand.

"What the hell are
they
doing here?" Lightstone demanded, glaring at Kleinfelter.

"You mean Paul and Carl?" Kleinfelter asked. "They're what you might call your competition. You think you're the only guy who ever came up to Alaska looking to make a deal?"

"Are you trying to tell me I've got to stand here in front of an audience and
bid
for this shit?" Lightstone couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"That's about it," Kleinfelter told him.

Lightstone nodded toward the newcomers. "So why don't
they
have to get their nuts fried in a goddamned X-ray machine?" he demanded.

"I've been dealing with Paul and Carl for a couple of months now," Kleinfelter said. "I know a lot about them. But you're new."

"Fucking incredible," Henry Lightstone muttered.

"To tell you the truth," Kleinfelter said, "I don't think you're really going to be competitors anyway."

"Mind telling me why?" Lightstone asked.

"Take a look at the merchandise."

They all watched as Carl crowbarred open the top of the ammo crate.

"What the hell's
that?"
Henry Lightstone asked, staring into the open container.

Carl smiled. "That, my friend, is what Mr. Kleinfelter likes to refer to as Alaskan White."

"But that's a . . . a . . ."

"An ivory carving?" Paul suggested as he picked one of the carvings out of the crate.

"I don't believe this," Henry Lightstone said.

"You got a problem with it?"

The voice behind Lightstone belonged to the biker named Popper.

Turning around, Lightstone snarled: "Fuck off."

He froze when he heard the distinctive
click
of a six-inch knife blade snapping open.

Spinning to his left, Lightstone shoved the thrusting knife hand aside with his open right palm, brought his left hand up to catch the wrist, and then twisted hard.

The crack was audible above Popper's choking scream.

For a long moment, everyone simply stared.

Lightstone retrieved the open knife. Closing the blade, he tossed it to the ex-Raider-turned-bouncer, who had stepped in between Kleinfelter and Lightstone.

Catching the knife, the man stared at Lightstone appraisingly, as if trying to decide which limb to rip off first.

"Man, I'm
really
going to enjoy this one," the bouncer finally said.

"I shouldn't have let it get out of control like that," Lightstone forced himself to say, even though no one seemed to care about the injured biker, who thrashed on the concrete.

"Popper'll survive," Brendon Kleinfelter said. He motioned to a pair of his men, who picked the man up off the floor and carried him out of the warehouse. "The question is, will you?"

Kleinfelter was smiling, but his eyes were expressionless.

"None of this would have happened if you'd given me some kind of warning," Lightstone said.

"When Brendon offered to sell you a thousand pounds of Alaskan White," Paul said, "you weren't expecting to purchase ivory, were you?"

"Not hardly," Lightstone replied.

"I don't suppose your people have any drugs around here that you might offer this fellow instead?" Paul laughed as he turned to Kleinfelter. "Some cocaine, perhaps?"

"We could probably lay our hands on a kilo or two," Kleinfelter shrugged.

"Oh, yeah—" Lightstone started to say. Kleinfelter held up his hand.

"But I don't think it's smart selling cocaine to an undercover cop."

Lightstone's knees sagged.

"Are you sure about that?" Paul asked.

"Oh, I'm sure," Brendon Kleinfelter said. "This guy is Henry Lightstone, homicide investigator for the San Diego Police Department. Soon to be ex-homicide investigator."

Lightstone thought about the Chief's Special in his boot, but he was suddenly aware that all three bouncers were now holding baseball bats and that the eight remaining bikers had unzipped their black leather jackets to reveal an assortment of handguns.

"Homicide?" Paul said, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "I would have thought narcotics, surely?"

"No, the man's definitely homicide," Brendon Kleinfelter shook his head. "See, about six or eight months ago, some homicide dick named Bobby LaGrange was rummaging around the harbor area, trying to figure out why some two-bit hooker got herself dead. Somewhere along the line, LaGrange got the idea that some of us might have been involved, so we decided to distract him a little. That about the size of it, Henry?"

Henry Lightstone said nothing.

"And this Bobby LaGrange, I take it, worked with this fellow here?" Paul asked, looking over at Lightstone.

Kleinfelter nodded.

"I see," Paul said calmly. "And tell me, uh, Henry," the man went on, seemingly unfazed by this latest bit of information, "how much time does Brendon face if he's charged for your friend's unfortunate, uh, accident?"

Henry Lightstone decided he had nothing to lose by going along with this man's game. If nothing else, it might buy him more time.

"If Bobby recovers, three to ten," Lightstone said.

"And if he doesn't?"

"He'll fry."

"Only three to ten years for nearly beating a police officer to death? That's incredible. Don't you think so, Carl?"

"Hell of a deal," Carl nodded in agreement as he continued to rummage through the ivory statues.

"Especially when a person could get ten years and a ten- thousand-dollar fine just for selling one little carving," Paul went on, holding up the statue of a walrus. "African elephant ivory.
Loxodonta africana.
Absolutely prohibited. And, of course, Lord knows what he might get if there are any more like this." He gestured toward the pile of ammo crates.

"Ten years for
that?"
 
Henry Lightstone said, astonished.

"At least one more," Carl called out as he held up a carved seal.

"Oh, good," Paul said. "That makes it twenty and twenty. Oh, and did I happen to mention," he said, turning to Brendon Kleinfelter, who had a thoroughly perplexed expression on his bearded face, "that Carl and I are federal agents and that you and your associates are all under arrest?"

"What?"
Kleinfelter blinked in disbelief.

"Arrest," Paul repeated. "You know, hands above your head, you have the right, and so on and so forth."

"You are out of your fucking mind," Brendon Kleinfelter said softly.

"Like I told you, I'm with the federal government," Paul said agreeably. "Now, if you'll all just put your hands above your heads . . ."

Henry Lightstone was still looking back and forth between Paul, Brendon Kleinfelter, and the ex-Raider bouncer with the bat when the outlaw leader suddenly came alive and reached for the shoulder-holstered 9mm Smith & Wesson under his black leather jacket.

Henry Lightstone was already lunging at Kleinfelter, and he barely saw the bat in time to duck. The hulking bouncer caught Kleinfelter square in the middle of his bearded face, knocking him head over heels in a spray of blood and broken teeth.

The biker closest to Lightstone was still fumbling for his own automatic, but now Lightstone was back on his feet, kicking him hard—first in the knee and then in the neck— seizing his gun, then spinning around with the 9mm Ruger semiautomatic pistol in both outstretched hands.

He was too late. A noise like a dozen coconuts cracking together ripped through the warehouse and signaled the end of the fight.

Before Lightstone's astonished eyes, six of the bikers lay sprawled out on the concrete floor, while two of the bouncers, down on their knees, were checking pulses and applying handcuffs. Two other bikers were dangling from the huge hands of the ex-Raider-turned-bouncer, who dropped each to the concrete with a loud, hollow
thunk.

Henry Lightstone looked up at the hulking giant in disbelief.

Paul nodded to Lightstone. "Dwight Stoner. Ex-offensive tackle for the Raiders." He glanced at the sprawled figure of Brendon Kleinfelter. "Also, fortunately for us, a special agent of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service."

Chapter Two

Sunday, September 26th

At eleven o'clock on the same morning, seven hours after the Alaska White suspects had been booked into the Anchorage Police Department jail, Mike Takahara opened the door of the penthouse suite in the downtown Anchorage Hilton.

"We were about ready to give up on you two," the muscular agent said cheerfully as he motioned the two men inside, then firmly pushed the door shut. "Hey, guys, we've got company."

The three men seated at the dining-room table looked up as U.S. Attorney Jameson Wheeler and Henry Lightstone entered the room.

"Hey, Jameson
! ?Que pasa, hombre?
And Lightstone, mah
man."
 
Larry Paxton grinned widely.

"Yep, it's that crazy fellow all right." Dwight Stoner, the huge bouncer-agent nodded, then went back to work on his dinner-plate-sized omelet.

"Ah, don't know, man, maybe he ain't so crazy after all," Paxton observed. "Dude brought a gawdamned
lawyer
with him this time."

"Yeah, but he didn't bring a very
good
one," Carl Scoby said, giving Wheeler a broad wink.

"I keep telling them that I'm either going to start being more selective about my clients or up my already outrageous fees, but they just won't listen," U.S. Attorney Jameson Wheeler said to Lightstone as he shook his head sadly. Then he yelled out toward the kitchen, "Hey, McNulty, how's a guy supposed to get anything to eat around here?"

"About time you guys showed up," Paul McNulty said as he poked his head through the kitchen door. He came out wiping his hands on his grease-stained apron. "Thought you might have decided to have brunch down at the jail instead. What'll it be? The McNulty Special?"

"I'll have whatever Stoner's having, only make it normal human size," Wheeler answered.

"You got it," McNulty said agreeably. Then he turned toward Henry Lightstone, who was still standing in the entryway of the spacious four-room suite.

"So, what do you think, Henry?" MeNulty asked, a thoughtful expression on his relaxed face.

"I'd say this place looks more like a drug dealer's hideaway than the command headquarters for a federal undercover operation. It's also a lot nicer than where I spent the evening," he finally said.

"Yeah, I understand the PD's a little stingy on its accommodations," MeNulty smiled.

"Did it ever occur to you guys," Lightstone went on, "that you
could
have told them I was a cop before you had me booked?"

"Shit.
Knew
there was something we forgot to do," Larry Paxton said to Dwight Stoner.

"Told me
you
were gonna do that," Stoner said, mumbling the words through a large mouthful of omelet.

"Me?
Ah thought
you—"

Lightstone turned to Wheeler. "Of course they
did
remember to tell the cops that I'd been pinched for buying illegal walrus ivory, so they'd be sure to announce it to the world when they put me in the tank with about a half-dozen shit-face-drunk Eskimos."

"Oh, yeah, we definitely remembered to do that," Stoner nodded with a cheerful smile.

"So how'd the brothers react when they saw you get bailed out a few hours later by some sleazy lawyer?" Larry Paxton asked as he winked at Jameson Wheeler.

"I'd say it probably confused the hell out of them," Lightstone said. "It confused the hell out of me, too. The way I understood it, I was supposed to dig at them a little deeper while Kleinfelter and Popper were still in the hospital."