Strong Light of Day (15 page)

“If you've got a few minutes,” he started, “maybe I'm ready now.…”

 

30

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

“Well?” Cort Wesley posed when she stepped back out onto the porch.

“Luke was asleep.”

“Took you a long time to figure that out.”

“I just wanted to make sure.” She stopped, choosing her next words carefully. “I heard you talking to someone from inside.”

“I'll whisper next time.”

“Leroy?”

“What do you think?” Cort Wesley asked, and then he started again before Caitlin could answer. “Sometimes
I
think I've gone fully around the bend.” He looked toward the porch railing, expecting the empty root beer bottle to still be there, but it was gone. “Only two people in this world who make any sense to me, and one of them's not in this world at all.”

“Speaking of sense…”

“What were you and Luke talking about?”

“I told you—”

“I know what you told me. Now tell me what you talked about.”

Caitlin came up close to the porch swing but stopped short of taking her seat back. “It's been a long day, Cort Wesley.”

He rolled his eyes. “You sound like Leroy.”

“Maybe you should listen to him more.”

He shook his head. “I swear the two of you have joined forces. Maybe it was him you were talking to upstairs, not Luke.”

Caitlin remained standing. “Except he was down here talking to you.”

“It's been a long day, Ranger.” Cort Wesley cracked a smile that seemed to rise out of nowhere. “Wonder if our dads argued like this that time they worked together.

“We'll have to ask Captain Tepper what happened next, after the night of that famous bar fight.”

“No, we don't, Ranger,” he told her, “because I know a part of the story too.”

 

31

H
OUSTON,
T
EXAS; 1983

“Russian guy I've been dealing with, the one who ripped me off, goes by the name of Stanko,” Boone Masters explained from the passenger seat of Jim Strong's pickup truck. “I call him Stinko.”

Jim lowered the binoculars from his eyes. “Bet that pissed him off.”

“Well, he pissed me off first, and that was even before he ripped off my warehouse.”

“Full of those appliances you ripped off from others.”

“You saying that made what he did okay?”

“Stealing from a crook? I don't believe that would get him any sympathy from a court; you neither, Mr. Masters.”

They were baking in the August sun on the rooftop level of a parking garage directly across the street from a gleaming downtown building that served as the international headquarters for a company called MacArthur-Rain that Jim had never heard of. The building stood out from the other skyscrapers around it, not only for its ultramodern, sleek look but also for the courtyardlike grounds that adorned a private landscaped plaza where any number of employees were currently eating a picnic-style lunch. Not bad work, if you could get it, Jim supposed, as the song “She Works Hard for the Money,” by Donna Summer, continued playing over the truck's radio.

Down in the plaza, the man Boone Masters had called Stanko was huddled among three other men who were even bigger and broader than he was. The leaders of the Russian gang Masters claimed had ripped off his warehouse seemed to be competing for which man could hold the most smoke in his lungs. They were chain-smoking their lunch, grinning up a storm, and seeming to eye every pretty woman that passed by, in unison, making just enough of a scene to make those women feel uncomfortable. Casting the kind of leering, lurid glares that were enough to make their visual targets eat lunch at their desks for the rest of the week. Their uniformly dark suits worn over light shirts and black ties made them look more like caricatures lifted from an artist's imagination than the real-life violent thugs they were.

“Why do you do that?” Masters asked suddenly.

“Do what?”

“Call me ‘mister.' I'd be obliged if you stopped showing me false respect. You figure that, by addressing me that way, it creates some kind of bond between us. I'm here it to tell you that it hasn't and won't.”

“You finished?” Jim asked Boone Masters.

“Huh?”

“Waving your dick in the air, trying to claim the upper hand when, so long as I got that unsigned warrant on my desk for your boy's arrest, you might as well use that hand to diddle yourself. Now, what else can you tell me about Stanko's gang?”

“They smell like potatoes and piss vodka. I don't know the names of the other three, never exchanged a word with them. What I can tell you is they have no regard for us at all.”

“Us as in Texans?”

“No, as
Americans.
They only want to be doctored by a Russian, have their house painted by a Russian, their broken window fixed by a Russian. You don't speak the language and come from a place I can't pronounce, you're just passing through until they have no use for you anymore.”

“You describing yourself in that regard?”

Masters frowned, then let the look dissolve into a sneer. The first bars of “Every Breath You Take” by the Police started playing and he switched off the radio. “Never figured you for a Top Forty man, Ranger. Figured you more for the country music type, or maybe news radio.”

“Well, as long as my daughter, Caitlin, likes that kind of music, that's what I listen to. Michael Jackson's her favorite right now. He ever plays a concert in these parts, I'll have to put in to work the security detail so I can take her.”

Masters gnashed his teeth, his jaws working like he was chewing a nonexistent piece of gum. “That a reference to our relative merits as parents?”

“I never took my kid on a job with me, Mr. Masters. You can do the math on that as good as me. Now, get back to the Russians.”

Before resuming, Boone Masters turned the radio back on and spun the dial to a country station playing “You're Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation” by Ronnie McDowell, the song seeming oddly appropriate enough to leave him easing back a bit on his throttle.

“I thought I was a different,” he told Jim Strong. “Guess all the others they ripped off thought the same thing. They come at you real friendly. New guy who showed up recently said he liked my jacket, so I gave it to him. Gesture of goodwill, right? I come outside from the meeting and it turns out his crew had stolen the mag wheels off my truck while he was thanking me. Hey, stop laughing.”

Jim sucked in some breath. “Sorry. Couldn't help myself.”

“It was thirty-five degrees, and I had no coat and no wheels—yeah, I can see the humor there. Problem being, who does someone like me go to when they've been ripped off? Try putting a crew together to take on these Russians, who sleep in their bulletproof vests.” The sneer vanished, replaced by an expression so flat it seemed to swallow the wrinkles that too much time in the sun had dug into Masters's brow and cheeks. “That's why I'm sitting here beside you right now. Since I can't get them, helping you is the next best thing.”

“Get back to this new guy.”

“What about him? He showed up just before they jacked my warehouse.”

“I was going to ask you
why
he showed up, not when.”

“I know when. Can't tell you why, except to say Stinko didn't seem too happy about it.”

Jim didn't seem to hear him; too busy working with the binoculars again.

“When exactly do you plan on telling me what this is really about, Ranger?”

“You asked me that already.”

“I must not have gotten an answer worth remembering.”

Jim Strong moved the binoculars slightly, staying on Stanko's gang as they moved into the shade from the sun. “It started with an alert.”

“What kind of alert?”

“One that tells law enforcement bodies that the Soviets may have sent KGB agents here in the guise of mobsters. Kind of a last stand, since they realized the Cold War was a lost cause.”

“Stanko?”

Jim lowered the binoculars. “How long's he been here?”

“I was fencing merchandise through him for over a year before he ripped off my warehouse.”

“That would square with the timing mentioned in the alert,” Jim said and raised the binoculars again.

Achoo!

“Gesundheit,” Jim said across the cab.

“Wasn't me, Ranger.”

Jim laid the binoculars down on the bench seat between him and Masters and threw open the driver's door, shaking his head. “Well, shit…”

He stepped out of the truck, the sun heating up his skin on contact. He moved to the pickup's bed and yanked back the tarpaulin that should've been covering a toolbox and bag of old clothes he'd forgotten to drop at the Goodwill.

It was covering his six-year-old daughter, Caitlin, instead.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said, biting her lip.

“What you doing back there, little girl?”

“Figured you could use some help. ‘Backup,' Grandpa calls it.”

Jim nodded. “He know you came along?”

“Nope. I snuck past him when he was taking his morning nap.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer to him. “Don't tell him I told you, but Grandpa's old.”

Jim Strong hoisted his daughter from the bed and placed her down before him.

“I forgot my Colt,” she continued, referring to the old Peacemaker Earl Strong was using to teach her how to shoot. “Hit the target with every shot at the range the other day, a couple in the bird's-eye.”

“That's
bull's
-eye.”

“Isn't that what I said?”

“You can't be doing this, Caitlin.”

“What?”

“Coming to work with me.”

Caitlin looked up toward the shape of Boone Masters, who had the binoculars pressed against his eyes now. “Is that man working with you?”

“I suppose.”

“He got any kids?”

“One son, I believe.”

“Does he shoot?”

“I'm sure he does, little girl.”

“Bet he's not as good as me,” Caitlin said, her upper lip stiffening.

And that's when the shooting started on the plaza below.

*   *   *

Jim Strong pushed Caitlin against the truck frame for safety. “Stay right there and don't move, not even an inch!”

He had his .45 out it the next instant, sweeping around the length of the truck as the distinctive clack of gunfire continue to pour up from the plaza. Jim first saw the bystanders scattering in all directions, having abandoned their picnic-style lunches and looking ridiculously small from this distance. The gunfire ratcheted into a staccato barrage and Jim got a bead on the gunmen as a pair of them was opening up with automatic weapons, assault rifles, blasting away at Stanko and his gang, who were twisting and turning like some crazed dance step before finally crumpling or falling backwards. The gunmen were all wearing ski masks, darting away in opposite directions before the last member of Stanko's crew had hit the plaza ground.

Jim wished he could leap from the top of the parking garage to the ground like Superman and chase the bastards down. As it was, he'd have to charge down six flights, only to emerge back into the day with the stench of urine from the parking garage stairwell stuck to his nostrils—for no good reason now. The shooters would be long gone by the time he got his breath back, and following that plan meant leaving Caitlin in the company of Boone Masters.

So he climbed back into his truck, leaving the door open as he grabbed the radio mike from its stand and called up Houston police. Not that he needed to; sirens were already wailing in the distance, and Jim tossed the mike down in frustration.

“I warned you about these Russians,” Boone Masters smirked.

“Yeah? Well, from my angle, Stanko and his boys just got turned into Swiss cheese. It would seem our association has come to an end.”

Masters shook his head. “No, it hasn't.”

“Come again?”

“That new Russian I told you about, that I gave my jacket to? One of the gunmen we just watched do the shooting down there looked awful familiar to me, because he was wearing that jacket.”

 

32

S
HAVANO
P
ARK,
T
EXAS

Caitlin smiled whimsically. “That was your father in the front seat of my dad's truck that day? I never got a good look at him. My dad made me ride home under the tarp, even though it started to rain to punish me.”

“You ever stow away like that again?”

“Oh yeah, a couple times, anyway.”

Cort Wesley flashed a smile slighter than hers. “So you met my father long before you met me.”

“We weren't exactly introduced. How'd you know?”

“It was one of the last things my dad and I ever talked about. He got a kick out of telling the story. He was doped up on painkillers in the hospital at the time, so I wasn't even sure it was true. Until we actually met, that is. Then I knew it had to be.”

Caitlin smiled slightly. “Jim Strong would've liked the boys, Cort Wesley.”

“Boone Masters would've, too—would've likely seen them as extra hands on the cheap to take on a job, just like he saw me.”

“Seems a different man than the one you've told me about often enough.”

“That's because I was never sure any of the story about him and your dad teaming up was real, until Captain Tepper confirmed it.”

Caitlin realized only then that the swing was rocking and likely had been through the whole of the story Cort Wesley had just finished. Her stomach felt a little unsettled—more from the memories, though, than the swaying. Most of the time she liked holding them in her mind, but tonight, for some reason, was different.