Wicked Break (3 page)

Detective John Wellton said, “Braddock. What a complete and utterly unpleasant surprise.”

We were standing in the parking lot and I watched as the EMTs loaded Rachel into the ambulance, ready to take her to Sharp Hospital. She'd been shot once. There was a lot of blood and I couldn't tell how badly she was hurt.

“I'm missing a gnome in my garden,” I said. “You'd make a nice replacement.”

Wellton glared at me. He wore a light blue oxford open at the neck tucked into gray dress slacks. The sunglasses on his face were just slightly darker than his skin. And even in the thick-heeled loafers, he didn't break five-four.

“Funny, asshole.” He turned back to the apartments. “What did you see?”

I watched a team of officers mill around the spot where she'd been shot. “Came out of the office. She was already standing there. Then she collapsed.”

He nodded and removed the sunglasses. “See the shooter?”

“Nope. I heard the shot, but that was it.” I pointed at Sam's office. “I was in there.”

He nodded again. We watched Dana come out of the apartment with two officers. She was sobbing and each officer had an arm under an elbow to keep her steady.

“And your reason for being here?” Wellton asked.

“Is none of your business,” I said.

He snorted. “Well, whatever you were doing, nice work.”

I hadn't seen him in a while and he was as irritating as I remembered.

“I was looking for the kid that lives in the apartment next to hers,” I said, deciding there was no reason to keep it from him. “Talked to both girls for maybe ten minutes, they didn't know anything about where he is. Then I came out and talked to the manager.”

I thought about the guns that Peter had seen in Linc's apartment. I hadn't seen them yet, so I wasn't sure they existed. At least, that's how I rationalized not bringing them up.

“Rolovich is the manager?”

“Yeah. A piece of crap, but I don't think he knows anything.”

“You two probably had a lot in common, then.”

Maybe Wellton was more irritating than I remembered.

“Santangelo should be here in a minute,” he said, glancing at me.

My stomach tightened at the mention of his partner's name. I hadn't seen her in a while and I didn't have any plans to change that.

“She's coming down?” I asked.

He looked at his watch. “Anytime now.”

A knot. It was now a definite knot in my stomach.

“You done with me?” I asked.

Wellton turned to me, his eyes steady. “Still on the outs with her, huh?”

“Wouldn't know. Haven't spoken to her in a long time.”

“Lucky her,” he said, the corners of his mouth flickering into a grin. “Yeah, I'm done with you. For now.”

“Can I take my Jeep?”

He smiled and shook his head. “That I'm not done with.”

“Why not?”

“It's inside my crime scene.”

“When can I get it back?”

His smile got bigger. “When I say so.” He paused. “Maybe I'll take it for a spin.”

“You should. It's probably more fun than your Big Wheel.”

His smile disappeared. He glared at me for a moment, then turned and moved away.

I walked to the street and stood there, wondering how I was going to get home. I was contemplating the bus when a Yellow Cab came down El Cajon. I waved at him and he came over three lanes to meet me.

“Where to?” he asked out the passenger window, leaning across the passenger seat.

“Mission Beach.”

“You got cash?”

“Yeah.”

“All yours, then.”

As I opened the rear passenger door, I glanced up and saw Liz Santangelo stepping out of her car on the far side of the lot.

She shut the door and stood next to the car. She wore a bright green blouse and slim black pants. Her dark hair was pulled back over her shoulders and I could make out silver earrings on her ears. Her gun bulged on her hip.

I hadn't seen her in about six months. The last time I'd seen her had been in a hospital hallway. She'd walked out on me, disappointed again in a choice I'd made, our always-sputtering relationship screeching to a halt. I'd done something impulsive against her wishes that had resulted in the deaths of two people and nearly mine as well.

I hadn't called her and she hadn't called me. My reason was stubbornness. I wasn't sure what hers was.

But seeing her now, I realized how much I missed her.

She glanced in my direction, doing a double-take, and then the look on her face telling me that she wished she hadn't done that. Or that she at least wished I hadn't seen her do it.

We stood there for a moment, each of us looking at the other, she looking as unsure as I felt.

I finally held my hand up to Liz, a halfhearted, confused wave. Maybe a symbolic white flag of sorts.

She blinked once, turned her head, and walked over to the group of cops in the parking lot without acknowledging me.

“We going anytime soon, pal?” the driver asked from inside the idling cab.

I slid into the backseat, stung more than I wanted to be. “Yeah. We're going right now.”

The cab dropped me off at the corner of Mission and Jamaica. Mission Beach is a conglomeration of mazelike alleys about ten feet wide and I didn't want to subject him to the rigors of maneuvering to my house.

I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and heard clapping out near my patio. I walked out of the kitchen and opened the back slider.

Carter, all six-foot-nine of him, was doing a handstand on the three-foot wall that separates my patio from the boardwalk. A group of four Japanese tourists were alternately snapping photos of him and cheering from the boardwalk side of the wall.

“Did you tell them that you can drink beer through your nose, too?” I asked.

He lifted his head in my direction. “I didn't think they'd find that as charming.”

He brought his legs down and sprang off the wall onto the patio, his yellow board shorts and white tank top falling into place. His fans erupted into more applause.

He bowed to them and held out his hand. They shoved some cash into his massive palm and then shuffled off, chattering excitedly among themselves.

“Do I get a cut of that?” I asked, sitting down in one of the patio chairs.

“No.”

“It's my property.”

He shoved the bills into his pocket and grinned. “Yeah, but you don't support my act.”

“That is so true.”

Carter Hamm, my best friend, sat down next to me. His white-blond hair was sticking up like tiny spikes on his head. He propped his huge feet up on the small table in front of us.

“That dude find you this morning?” he asked.

I looked across the boardwalk to where Peter Pluto had waited for me at the edge of the water. “Yeah. Let's chat about that.”

“Chat? You must really be pissed.”

“Handstands and perceptive. You are one of a kind.”

He leaned back in the chair. “That's what the ladies tell me.”

I sipped from the beer and shook my head. “Yeah, the dude from this morning found me. When I was out in the water. When I wasn't looking for a job.”

Carter glanced to me, his dark eyes squinting into the disappearing sun. “So you bailed on him?”

I took another drink and didn't say anything.

“No, of course not,” he said, nodding his head. “You decided to help him. Plus, you need cash.”

“It's your fault.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“I just told him where to find you.”

“And you knew I'd say yes.”

“I didn't even know what he wanted.”

“Not to take my picture doing a handstand, that's for sure.”

“Well, you suck at handstands.”

Arguing with Carter was like arguing with a three-year-old—a genetic freak of a three-year-old.

I held up my hand. “Fine. My fault.”

He folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “Exactly. So what happened?”

“Went to look for this guy's brother at his apartment and while I was there, a girl got shot.”

“Shut up.”

“I'd like to, but you keep asking me questions.”

I set my beer down on the table between our chairs. He immediately snatched it, held it up to his mouth, and emptied it.

“Tell me,” he said, setting the empty bottle down.

I told him about Linc's place, the girls, Rolovich, and the shooting.

“That's some afternoon,” he said when I was done.

“No kidding.”

“You gonna keep looking for the kid?”

I shrugged because I didn't know now if I wanted to or not.

We sat there staring for a few minutes at the bouquet of purples and yellows in the sky at the far edge of the water. The crowd on the boardwalk was slowly dissipating as the evening trudged in.

“You wanna go out?” Carter asked, gesturing at the water. “Decent swells should be here soon.”

I closed my eyes. “Nah.”

We sat there again quietly for a few moments.

“You saw her, didn't you?” he said finally.

“Saw who?”

“The Virgin Mary. Who the hell do you think I mean? Liz.”

I didn't say anything. Of all the annoying things about Carter, perhaps the one that bugged me the most was his ability to read me like an eye chart.

“Did you talk to her?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Didn't feel like it.”

“Right.”

The truth was I didn't know why I hadn't just gone over to talk to Liz. Maybe it was because I was afraid of what she'd say to me. Not talking to her had become weirdly comfortable and I wasn't sure I was ready to give that up.

Carter stood, yanked off his tank top, and grabbed the eight-foot G&S surfboard next to the sliding door. He tucked it under his arm and stepped over the small stone wall onto the boardwalk.

He turned around. “You know I can't stand her, dude. I really can't. It would be fine with me if I never saw her again, never had to hear her name again.” He shook his head. “But if you're in love with her, or whatever, you're just being chickenshit. Flat out. So she's pissed at you. Big deal. Liz is pissed at everyone, as far as I can tell. Deal with it and quit sulking. I've watched it for too long now and I'm tired of it.” He shook his head. “I've never thought of you as a coward, Noah, and I don't really wanna start.”

He turned and walked down the sand toward the water and the exploding hues of the horizon and left me to think about that.

After a night of restless sleep, Rachel's eyes, Liz's face, and Carter's words rattling around in my brain, I decided I needed a few more details from Peter Pluto. I needed to see what specifically he'd meant by maybe Linc getting hooked up with a bad crowd. Did he know about the gang or was there another crowd I needed to be aware of?

And as much as I wanted to avoid the subject, I wanted to know more about their father. Nothing he'd told me about his brother had added up and I ended up watching a girl I'd just met take a bullet. I didn't know whether the shooting was tied directly to Linc Pluto's disappearance, but it sure seemed like an awfully big coincidence.

I walked up Mission to the Enterprise rental office, and after fifteen minutes drove away in a rented Ford Taurus. My car was still impounded and I didn't mind sticking a few more dollars on Peter Pluto's tab.

His home was in Clairemont, a nondescript suburb north of the downtown area and twenty minutes from my house. The community rests on the hills just above Mission Bay and stretches two dozen miles to the east. Middle-class housing, strip malls, and neighborhoods that had deteriorated marked what had once been a desired address. Most of the original residents had vacated to the sprawling suburbs of the east and north, seeking newer homes and newer schools, leaving most of Clairemont in search of an identity.

His address was just off Balboa, in the Mount streets, so named because the streets were named after the mountains of the world. I turned right on Mt. Arafat and then right again on Mt. Everest.

Not something you do every day.

I found Pluto's house near the end of a cul-de-sac on Mt. Everest. The ranch home was a faded gray, with a giant plum tree in the front yard. A beat-up basketball hoop rested above the garage and the grass in the yard was a mix of green and brown. A bright blue Ford pickup was parked in the driveway.

I walked up the drive to find both the screen door and front door wide open.

I poked my head in the entryway. “Hello?”

No one responded. I stepped onto the small tiled area just inside the door.

The living room had been ransacked. A TV was on the carpeting, smashed to pieces. The furniture was flipped over, pushed into a pile in the middle of the room.

I turned to the dining room. The table was dumped on its side, the oak chairs splintered into jagged hunks of wood. An overhead light had been yanked off the ceiling and crushed into glass shards.

My heart picked up speed.

Someone had issues with Peter Pluto's house.

I heard footsteps down the hallway off the dining room and stepped back, reaching for my gun, then realizing it was stuck in the glove box, impounded with my Jeep.

A guy somewhere in his twenties with a shaved head emerged. He was about my height at six-three, but thicker. He wore a gray T-shirt, dirty jeans, and scuffed black boots. The scowl on his face didn't detract from the quarter-sized black swastika tattooed just above his left eyebrow.

He paused when he saw me, then took a step in my direction. “Who the fuck are you?”

“That was gonna be my question for you.”

The scowl on his face tightened and I noticed what looked like blood on the knuckles of his right hand.

He took another step toward me, his small eyes narrowing. “You fuckin' with me?”

I held up my hands. “Just wondering if you were the one who did the redecorating in here.”

He stared at me for a moment, completely unafraid and completely angry. He glanced down the hallway from where he'd come, then back at me. His expression slowly changed. The snarl morphed into an arrogant, evil grin exposing yellow teeth. He shook his head. “Dude, you walked into the wrong house.”

Not the wrong house, but maybe the wrong time. “Did I?”

He laughed, as if I didn't realize how stupid I actually was. “Yeah, you did. Wanna tell me why you're here?”

“Not really.”

He shook his head again. “I'm not asking, dude. Why you here?”

He looked meaner than me, a veteran of fights that he'd probably instigated. But he was younger, which meant he wasn't wiser.

I followed his lead and stepped toward him. “Tell you what. Before I kick your ass and call the cops, why don't you tell me why
you're
here?”

His eyes flared and he stepped forward, a right hook coming at my head. I stepped inside of it and jammed the heel of my hand into his jaw. He fell backward against the wall of the dining room and slumped to the floor.

I stood over him for a moment. He refocused his eyes and brought his hand to his mouth, a thick stream of blood now coming out onto his chin.

“You done talking back now?” I asked him.

He looked at the blood on his hand, then at me. The slow, ugly grin came back, his teeth now red rather than yellow. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He looked past me and lifted his chin. “Mo's gonna take over.”

I turned around and after getting a look at the guy, I just assumed Mo was short for Mountain.

He was about six-foot-seven and a minimum of three hundred pounds of muscle. His nose was so crooked, it had to have been broken half a dozen times in half a dozen places. His gray eyes were empty, just staring at me. He wore a thick silver hoop in each ear. The dirty white tank top on his body exposed arms that were covered completely in tattoos. Women, birds, and swords, from what I could make out. His black jeans were torn in multiple places and the toes of his construction boots were caked in blood.

His head was also shaved and the phrase
WHITE IS RIGHT
was tattooed just above his forehead in simple black letters.

He looked around me at his partner. “You alright, Lonnie?”

“I'm fine,” Lonnie said from behind me.

“Want me to hurt him?” Mo asked, much in the same way one would ask if you needed a ride somewhere.

“Yep.”

I didn't like the way my future was being discussed without my involvement. I wasn't scared of Lonnie, but Mo looked less than human and I didn't see a way out of this.

“He see anything?” Mo asked, still looking around me.

“Don't think so. Make sure it stays that way.”

Mo gave a quick nod and moved at me faster than I expected. His right hand grasped my forearm and he pulled me forward. His left fist crashed into my stomach like a battering ram. Every ounce of air exploded from my body. The battering ram reloaded and slammed into my temple, an ugly rainbow of colors exploding in the backs of my eyes. I felt my knees buckle, but his hold on my forearm kept me up.

Lonnie walked around behind Mo, showing me another bloody grin. “Now you wanna tell me what you're here for?”

A wave of nausea swept through my body as Mo held me up like rag doll. I knew I was in trouble, but there was no way I was giving in to some racist punk.

“Fuck you,” I managed, trying to ready myself for what I knew was coming.

“You a friend of Pete's?” Lonnie asked.

I didn't answer.

“How about his little brother, the missing Linc?” he asked, grinning at me.

I looked away from him and tried to catch my breath.

Lonnie's smile changed to a frown. “You came here for a reason. What was it?”

I turned back to him. “Fuck you some more.”

Lonnie backed up, then kicked me in the stomach and the air rushed out of me again. Mo held me up.

“You don't wanna talk now?” Lonnie said, moving toward me. “That's cool. I'm gonna have my man Mo work you over a little bit. Not kill you. Just make you wish he had. But I need to know why you showed up here today, man. So when you wake up…if you wake up…think about me. Because I'll be around. And the next time you see me?” He leaned closer. “You'll be too scared to tell me to fuck off. And that's when you'll tell me what you were here for. And that's when I'll kill you, asshole.” He looked at Mo. “Have at him, dude.”

Mo spun me around and stared at me with the same empty look. His fist crashed into my temple again and my legs gave way completely. He tossed me to the ground, my face smashing into the carpet.

Lonnie leaned down over me, his breath warm and foul. “Don't fuck with us, dude. Not ever. You can't win.” I could feel him right next to my ear. “And remember. Next time, you talk and then you die.”

I groaned and rolled over on my back. Lonnie stepped away and Mo took his place, blocking out everything behind him. He knelt down beside me and pulled back his fist, ready to drop the battering ram once again on my face.

I turned away, as if doing so might protect me, and my eyes locked on something at the end of the hallway from where Lonnie had first emerged.

As Mo prepared to put me to sleep, I hoped that I would live to remember seeing what appeared to be Peter Pluto's body at the end of the hallway.