Allegiance (Joe Logan Book 4) (18 page)

“Good morning,” Margie said.  “Do you need a refill?”

“Please,” Della replied.  “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a baby.  I feel more positive this morning.  I think that everything will turn out fine.”

But things were far from fine.  Someone that they had begun to care for had died in a parking garage in New York City.

The
elevator door slid open and Sonny and Dusty strode out into the garage, both eager to get to Brooklyn and deal with Logan.

As the two men walked towards the Nissan, Logan stepped out from behind the pillar with his hands half raised, palms facing them.

Dusty stopped dead with a look of total surprise on his face, and Sonny banged into him from behind, causing Dusty to stagger forward a couple of paces.

“There are two armed men pointing guns at both of you,” Logan said.  “If either of you make a move it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

Dusty scanned the garage and spotted one shooter crouched behind a maroon Jaguar, holding a pistol two-handed.

Sonny was partly obscured by his boss.  He had also seen the man using the Jag for cover, and decided that he could take him out.  He drew the new Ruger pistol that Dusty had furnished him with ‒ to replace the one that Logan had taken from him outside Bellevue ‒ and took a step to the side and loosed off four bullets as Dusty dropped to one knee, smoothly withdrawing his Glock from its shoulder rig with the intention of shooting Logan.

He was a half-second too late: didn’t get the chance to take aim.  Logan had not hesitated, just reacted and exploded forward, leaning to the left and bringing his knee up like a piston to connect with Quaid’s abdomen and knock him back off his feet.

It all happened so fast.  Benny saw Sonny Gilmore fire at Paulie, and momentarily drew back behind the BMW, to then reappear almost instantaneously take careful aim at Gilmore and pull the trigger of the revolver three times.  The pistol kicked in his hand and the first bullet whined harmlessly above Sonny, to hit the ceiling, flatten out and ricochet off to smash through the windshield of a late model SUV.  But the second slug hit Sonny in the upper arm, and the third took the side of his head off.

As the thunderous reports echoed around what was in all but name an underground box of concrete construction, Sonny spun round, and a mist of blood, brain tissue and gleaming splinters of bone whirled through the air, painting his face in a broad band of scarlet.  He raised his gun in Benny’s direction, and then froze for a moment as all communication between his brain and body became totally disrupted.  His eyes rolled back, his mouth dropped open, and the gun he held slipped through his slack fingers, to hit the ground a second before sonny collapsed next to it.

Dusty had instinctively tensed his abs, which saved him from being badly winded, but not from falling down.

Logan stamped on the back of Quaid’s right hand, mashing it as he twisted his foot back and forth to let the pressure of weight and the deep grooves of his boot sole tear open the skin and break small bones.

Issuing a guttural sound of combined pain and rage, Dusty sat up, fisted his left hand and struck Logan high and hard with a looping yet heavy punch to his right kidney.

Logan sagged down to his knees and was head butted, fortunately on the forehead and not the nose, which had been Dusty’s intended target.

Dipping his head, Logan bit down with all of his force on the top half of his opponent’s ear, wrenched his head to the side and tore it free.

Dusty roared in defiance at the resulting pain, but became suddenly silent as a fist hammered into his temple with enough force to stun an ox.

Benny ran to Logan.  He didn’t know that Paulie had been hit.

“Go and see if Paulie’s okay,” Logan said.

Benny rounded the front of the car and saw Paulie sitting with his back up against the side of the Kia that was parked next to the Jag.  He knew that he was dead.  There was a dime-sized hole above his left eyebrow, and his eyes were open but totally vacant.

Only one of Sonny’s bullets had hit Paulie, who’d ducked down as the first slug tugged at his sleeve.  It was the last shot that had smashed through the Jag’s front side windows and hit him, to take his life in mid breath.  He had died without knowing that it had happened, which was probably the best way to go.

Logan picked up the dropped handguns and pocketed them before grasping Quaid by the ankles and dragging him to the station wagon.  He manhandled him into the rear and hit him again hard behind his undamaged ear with the butt of his gun, not wanting him to come to and cause more trouble.

“Paulie’s fuckin’ dead, man,” Benny shouted.

Logan jogged over to where Benny was squatting next to the detective.  He felt his neck for a pulse, but he was gone.  He took his gun and his wallet, and pulled the cuffs from the pouch on his belt.

“You just gonna leave him here?” Benny said with tears in his eyes.

“Yeah.  I’ll call it in when we’re away from the area.  Let’s get out of here before anyone comes.”

Benny followed Logan back to the Malibu and stood and watched as he cuffed Quaid’s hands behind his back, pushed him down into the rear foot well and covered him with a tartan throw that had been on the back seat.

“Get in, I’ll drive,” Logan said, recognizing that Benny was suffering shock from what had happened.  “We need to take Quaid somewhere out-of-the-way where we won’t be disturbed.”

Benny said nothing, just climbed in the front seat and stared at the dash.  His mouth was bone dry and he was shaking.  He couldn’t dismiss the mental video that was on a loop inside his head.  He didn’t see the interior of the vehicle: he saw Sonny Gilmore being hit by two of the three bullets he had fired at the guy.  It was like viewing a scene from the Matrix.  He watched the first spinning bullet go high, and the second one drill into Gilmore’s arm, forcing blood out with no more speed than slow-rolling magma running down the side of a volcano.  And then with the acuity of a hawk, or a photographer zooming in with a high-power lens, he saw the third slug break through skin and bone, to emerge from the ruined skull and carry on; a bright-red comet’s tail following in its wake. Fragments of skull with hair attached spun lazily through the stale air, and what had been a single mass of soft, spongy, pinkish gray nerve tissue that regulated body activities, received and interpreted sensory impulses, and transmitted information to muscles and body organs, was now no more than flying, blood-coated pieces of insensate material, that if left adhered to the concrete floor would provide food for the cockroaches and rats.

Logan reached out, gripped Benny’s arm and shook it.  “Put it behind you,” he said.  “You did good.  Don’t let some lowlife’s death bother you.  He deserved what he got, and you’ve done the world a small favor.”

“I’ve never killed anyone before,” Benny whispered, more to himself than for Logan’s benefit.

“There’s always a first time for everything,” Logan said.  “He made the decision to start shooting at us.  You did exactly the right thing in self-defense, so don’t sweat it, just concentrate on here and now.  Where can we take Quaid?”

Benny thought about it.  He had spent his fair share of time living rough in empty and condemned buildings, especially in Hunts Point, which was a mainly Hispanic area in the South Bronx.  Over half the population lived below the poverty line, and a lot of the industrial buildings were abandoned and standing in weed-riddled lots.

“Hunts Point,” Benny said.  “With this old wagon and the way we’re dressed we won’t raise an eyebrow, and there are a thousand places to take this guy.”

Logan drove north.  He stopped once, took out his burner phone and made a call to Bellevue. Got put through to the reception of the ICU and said to the woman that answered: “This is Lieutenant Travis Reynolds, I’d like an update on Detective Arnie Newman.  As you can imagine there are a lot of concerned fellow officers here at 1 Park Plaza that I need to keep informed of his progress.”

There was a pause and he could hear voices.  And then the woman came back on and said, “Mr Newman is still unconscious but in a stable condition.”

“You mean still in a drug-induced coma?”

“Yes, for at least another forty-eight hours.”

“Okay, thank you for your time,” Logan said, and ended the call and phoned Margie on another burner that he had given her.

“Logan?” Margie said hesitantly, even though she knew that no one but he had the untraceable cell’s number.

“Yeah.  Arnie is still out of it, but stable, I just checked.”

“Thanks Logan,” Margie said.  “How are you three doing?”

“Paulie’s dead.  I’m hoping that we’ll be back with you tomorrow evening.  I’ll call you again if need be.  How are you and Della?”

Margie felt a lump form in her throat on hearing the terrible news.  And the cold, perfunctory way that Logan broke it to her somehow made it worse.

“We’re just marking time,” she said.  “Waiting for you.”

“Try to relax, this is almost over,” Logan said and punched the
END
button.

He started driving again. Picked up the Bruckner Expressway and soon after came off it at Hunts Point Avenue and stayed on it till he reached the end of the peninsula on the East River, where much to Benny’s chagrin they had a fine view of Rikers Island; a place that he hoped he would never be incarcerated in again.  But maybe he would, now that he’d shot a man dead.

Logan chose what had at one time been a cannery for processed meat.  The faded black lettering high up on the pitted, gull shit-streaked corrugated iron side of the building spelt out The Colfax Canning Co, which was now just a part of history; an open air exhibit, much like any archaic object that has become of no practical use.  No doubt in time it would be demolished and something else would be erected to fill the space.

Driving over a chain link gate that lay flat with clumps of yellowed grass and creeping weeds growing through all the diamond-shaped holes, Logan then drove over cracked and stained concrete to the far side of the building, to park next to a set of twenty-foot high doors that were sitting heavily on dirt-filled tracks.  He got out of the vehicle, gripped the side of one of the gates with both hands and heaved, rocked and pulled, using all of his considerable strength to loosen the wheels from the track, for the door to eventually, grudgingly roll open.

Driving into the enormous building, which had been stripped of all machinery, Logan parked next to a block of now windowless rooms that had once been offices.

“What’re you goin’ to do to him?” Benny asked as Logan opened the rear door, threw the blanket back and grasped Quaid by the ankles, to drag him out and into the nearest room.

“Talk to him.”

“About what?”

“Not the state of the nation.  He can tell us where Dalton will be tonight, and what would be the best way to abduct him.”

“But what will you do to Quaid?  You can’t just let him go.”

“Whatever will be, Benny.  Don’t sweat it.”

Dusty
came round sitting naked in shadowy surroundings.  He was freezing cold and the pain in his hand and head made him narrow his eyes to slits and grit his teeth.  There was no one in sight, so he attempted to stand up, but couldn’t.  From the sound of metal on metal he was sure that his wrists were cuffed behind his back to something.  Using his fingers he confirmed that they were.  And he could see that his ankles were bound by what he recognized to be his pants.  It took him a few seconds to recall what had happened.  The blows to his head had left him feeling nauseous and a little confused.  Logan had bested him, broken his hand and bitten half his fucking ear off.  And the ex-cop had not been alone.  Sonny had gotten the side of his head blown off by an unseen shooter.

“Logan,” he shouted, ignoring the bolts of pain that seemed to course through his brain.  “What do you want from me?”

There was no reply.  All he could hear was the wind whistling through the building and the muted sound of seagulls shrieking.  He must be near the ocean.  He could be anywhere, because he had no way of knowing how long he’d been unconscious. The minutes passed.  He shouted several times, then decided that he had been left in an isolated location to eventually die from hyperthermia.  He could see through the doorframe of the small room he was in, and beyond it was a deserted factory or mill. Shards of pearly daylight angled down from windows that were set too high up on the walls for him to see anything but sky.

Logan had removed the handcuffs, taken a phone, wallet and a spare mag of bullets from the pockets of the leather blouson that Quaid wore, and then stripped the man of all his clothes, to then re-cuff him and use the legs of his pants to bind his ankles together.  He then moved the Malibu so that it was out of sight from the room Quaid was in, before examining the contents of the wallet. There were major credit cards in slots at one side, and two thousand dollars in crisp fifty dollar bills in the compartment at the back of it.  He pocketed the wallet and then switched on the phone and scrolled through the contacts.  Fallon’s number was listed.

They waited. After a while Quaid began calling out.  Logan knew that he would be cold, disoriented and feeling vulnerable.  He also knew that the man had been a Navy SEAL, and would be able to soak up a lot of discomfort.

It was almost thirty minutes later that Logan stepped out of the station wagon and walked back to the room.  Benny followed on, but as instructed by Logan he stood back from the doorway, in view of their captive, but only as a silhouette.

Logan entered the room and looked down at Quaid, who had not been able to move due to the cuffs having been passed behind a rust-covered water pipe that ran the length of the wall, just six inches above floor level.

Logan said nothing.

Dusty did not want to speak, but the pressure of silence built up until he eventually broke it.  “What the fuck do you want from me?” he asked.

“Answers,” Logan said.  “I’ve gathered a lot of Intel on you, Dalton and Fallon from some of the assholes that work for you.  And Trask spilled his guts like a scared little kid before he died.”

“You murdered him in his hospital bed.  What does that make you?”

“Your worst nightmare, Quaid. You may be as hard as granite, but everybody has a breaking point.  I’ll take you to bits piece by piece if I have to, and doing it will give me nothing but pleasure.”

“You were a cop for twenty years, Logan.  I don’t think―”

Logan stomped on his stomach.

The top half of Dusty’s body shot forward as his knees bent, but the reaction to curl up in a fetal position was curtailed as the slim handcuffs bit into his wrists.  He groaned aloud at the sudden added pain that blossomed through his already sore stomach.

“Maybe that’s your problem Quaid, you don’t think.  I remember a rapist killer that I chased into Central Park from 66
th
Street.  I caught up with him at the side of the Naumburg Bandshell, brought him down and was about to cuff him and read him his rights.  But he just laughed at me, called me a stupid pig, and said that I’d never prove a damn thing against him.  Told me that knowing he was guilty wouldn’t help, and that without the knife he’d used on the teenage girl, or the jimmy cap he’d come in and dumped, I’d got nothing.  He also said that when he got sprung on bail he’d off another bitch and dedicate her to me.  That was all I needed.  You’ve got to sacrifice the few for the many.  I told him to stand up, and when he did I took three paces back, drew my gun and put a bullet through his heart.  After that I put my backup piece in his dead hand and fired off a shot.  My report was short and sweet. He took a shot at me as I attempted to apprehend him, so I fired in self defense.  End of story.  He was one scumbag less on the street and wasn’t going to ever rape or kill again.”

Dusty stared into Logan’s eyes and saw a total lack of empathy.  He would probably die where he lay, and there was not a single thing he could do to stop it from happening.  Compliance was the only card he had to play.

“Your choice,” Logan said, hoping that Quaid had believed the lie he had just fed him.  “Talk or die.”

“You’ll probably kill me whether I answer your questions or not,” Dusty said.

“If you’re straight with me you could get left here to take your chances.  You’re inside an abandoned cannery at Hunts Point.  Some kids, a dog walker or a fisherman could hear you if you keep shouting for help.”

“And you’ll take the risk of me surviving this and hunting you down?”

“I think that you’ll be too busy finding a nice deep hole to hide in from Dalton to worry much about me.  Because whether you tell me what I want to know or not, he’s going to be told that you squealed.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything about him and Fallon.  Everyone has patterns and routines.”

“Dalton and his team guard Fallon twenty-four seven.  You’d never get near them.  A couple of his guys are ex-Secret Service.”

“They don’t expect to be hit,” Logan said.  “Their perceived strength is a weakness.”

Dusty started to think that if Max was taken down then he would be safe.  His loyalty to the man only went so far, it was personal survival that took precedent, and he knew that Logan was right and that Max would put a contract out on him if Logan failed to deal with him.

“Where is he today?” Logan asked after Quaid had told him the set up of Dalton’s operation.

“He’s with Fallon at P-town.”

“As in Provincetown, Cape Cod?”

“Yeah.  Fallon has a property there.  He owns a ten acre lot of prime beachfront land.  It’s down near the end of the island with its own helipad.  We call it Fortress Fallon.  Max set up the security.”

“Best tell me all about it,” Logan said.  “Explain the lay-out and defenses in detail.”

Dusty talked for ten minutes.  All he actually knew was what Max had told him: that there was a high security fence with motion sensors, which was patrolled by armed guards, and that there were also infrared CCTV cameras.

Logan was impressed.  The would-be mayor of New York took his personal safety ultra seriously.  His only weakness was that he would feel safe from any move against him.

Kneeling down, Logan pulled Quaid as far over on to his side as the cuffs would allow, then unlocked them, moved back and watched as Quaid brought his hands round to his front and rubbed his chafed wrists.  The back of the hand that Logan had ground with his boot was swollen up like a balloon.

Taking Quaid’s cell from his front left pants pocket, Logan tossed it to him. “I want you to take a few deep breaths, relax as much as you can under the circumstances, and be aware that this is the most important call that you’ve ever made.  Convince Dalton that you’ve taken me and Arnie Newman’s wife out.  Think you can do that?”

Dusty nodded.

“And put it on speaker,” Logan said.  “I want to hear Dalton’s voice.”

Dusty made the call.

Dalton answered.  “Yeah, Dusty.  You got good news for me?”

“The best.  Our person of interest turned up in my parking garage.  Thought he could deal, but Sonny took him out.  And the cop’s wife was sitting in a car out on the street waiting for him.  They’re both on ice now.  I plan on having them taken to the Warehouse, packed in barrels of cement and dumped in the river.”

“Good work,” Max said.  “Did he have any flash drives on him?”

“Two.  I plan on looking at what’s on them.  And the woman had another backup in her purse.”

“That just leaves Newman.  Latest on him is that he may make it and not be brain dead.  We should have let that doctor deal with him.  Make sure that he doesn’t recover.”

“I’ll get on it,” Dusty said.  “When will you be back in town?”

“Within twenty-four hours.  The boss is entertaining some high-class hooker we flew in.  I doubt that she’ll be making the return trip with us.”

“Okay, Max.  I’ll have everything cleaned up before you get back.”

“Sweet,” Max said and ended the call.

“Throw the phone back to me,” Logan said.

Dusty had no intention of being cuffed again.  He threw the cell full force at Logan’s face and followed it, diving forward to crash into Logan’s legs, grip his ankles and jerk them forward.

Logan’s head speed was not in the same league as that of a dog’s or many other creatures, but his reactions were fast for a human.  He instinctively jerked his head to the side and was only caught a grazing blow as the phone hit his right cheek and pin wheeled out of the doorway to bounce on the concrete next to Benny’s foot.

Logan fell backwards, to land on his ass with jarring impact, and Quaid began to claw his way up his body.

Clenching his fist with the middle knuckle extended, Logan drove it into Quaid’s left eye, compressing it back in the socket as the protective bones around it shattered.  And yet Quaid seemed to have gone past feeling pain.  His uninjured hand found Logan’s throat, and he grasped it and applied instant and crushing pressure.

Logan tensed the muscles of his neck as he brought his knee up into Quaid’s groin, as Benny simultaneously stepped forward and kicked Quaid in the ribs, to knock him off. And as the naked man rolled sideways, he shot him twice with the .38 revolver.

The noise filled the small room; claps of explosive thunder bouncing back to deafen all three of them as it invisibly made egress through the doorway like an escaping entity.

Dusty Quaid somehow pushed himself up to his knees and just swayed in place.  The first round had entered him above the hip and traveled through his lower intestines , through the tissue and surrounding muscle to produce a ragged, tennis ball-sized exit wound.  The second round had struck him in the back, to the left of his spine, drilling through his kidney before erupting from his belly.

Logan and Benny just stared at Quaid.  The man shook his head.  His damaged eye was swollen closed, and it appeared that he was winking as he gave them a pained smile and said, “The only easy day was yesterday,” before pitching forward on his face to send motes of dust up to mingle with the cordite in the air.

“What did he mean by that?” Benny asked.

“It’s a Navy SEAL motto,” Logan replied.  “And you needn’t have shot him.  I was handling it.”

“I know you were,” Benny said.  “But if he’d walked away from this he wouldn’t have let it lie.  He would have tried to get back at us.  I want to be able to get on with my life without always expectin’ to be shot or stabbed to death.  And Margie and Della would have done the same. Shootin’ Quaid was just as much self defense as when I shot Gilmore at the garage.”

Logan noted the subtle difference in Benny’s attitude.  He was toughening up.  The events that had taken place since Arnie had been shot had been cumulative, and had altered the younger man’s disposition.

“Don’t get to enjoy pulling a trigger, Benny.  Or ever begin to see killing people as an acceptable way to deal with hostility in general.”

“I won’t,” Benny said.  “I’d be happier if none of this had happened.  But I know that until Dalton and maybe even Fallon are history, we won’t be safe.”

Logan knew that Benny was right.  Deep down he acknowledged that he had decided that those responsible for Arnie being in a coma would have to be hunted down and taken care of with extreme prejudice.  He accepted that Dalton and Fallon would have to die to re-establish the status quo.

Patting Benny on the shoulder, Logan said, “You’re right.  They’ve brought whatever happens on themselves.  We’ll do what we have to.  First thing we need to do is hide Quaid’s body.”

They found some old, damp sacking, a large section of corrugated iron sheeting that had been presumably blown down by high wind, and an office door that had been removed and dumped on the ground.  They dragged the body into a dark corner and covered it up, then kicked rubble and dust over the large pool of blood that had spread out to mark the spot where a man had died.

Back in the Malibu, Logan drove away from Hunts Point, to stop at the first coffee shop he saw.  He needed caffeine, and wanted to consider all that he now knew about Dalton and decide on the best time and place to make his move.

“What’s it to be?” Benny said, as if reading his mind.  “Do we go to Cape Cod for a change of scenery, or break into his penthouse in the city?”