Allegiance (Joe Logan Book 4) (5 page)

“Shut the fuck up,” Frankie said, turning and lashing out with his foot to kick Tony in the mouth.  The force of the impact shattered Tony’s jaw in three places and knocked out five of his teeth, and a mist of blood shot up from his ruined mouth as he fell back.

Lennox grinned.  This turn of events was unplanned and outstanding.  There was still enough coke in his system to let him appreciate the spectacle with acute clarity.  The action seemed to be unwinding in slow-motion, like a scene in a DVD would if he ran it frame by frame.  He saw each globule of blood slowly spurt from the man’s mouth, which was sagging open wider and wider.  Teeth spun out from the now gaping maw; each with its own bright red and liquid contrail looping behind it.

Violence was an art form, Lennox thought.  It had a certain immediate visual and visceral beauty that he was fascinated by, and it was three-dimensional with the added bonus of sound and smell.

Tony was dazed, and the pain in his side was superseded by the agony in his face.  He believed that he was about to die, and he was not mistaken.

Frankie stood over the injured, bleeding, moaning man, took careful aim and put three bullets in him; one in each eye and the third to the center of his forehead.

“Fuckin’ A,” Lennox said.  “Could’ve been a scene from a Tarantino movie.”

Frankie took a couple of deep breaths, removed the silencer from the pistol and put it in his pocket, then holstered his gun.  He felt better, even though his bitten ankle was throbbing.  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.  “You drive, and stop at the 7-11 store we passed on the way in.  I need to buy some cigarettes.  This gum is giving me fucking heartburn.”

Logan
parked in the well-lit lot of The Flatbush, a family diner only two blocks from the address he had for Arnie’s CI.  He needed to use the restroom and was ready for a cup of coffee.  And he also thought it was a safe place for Margie to wait for him.

“You amaze me,” Margie said when he joined her at a booth on the back wall, away from the large front windows.  “You act as if nothing was wrong.”

“Sometimes whatever is going down, you’ve got to take time out and smell the coffee,” Logan said with a small smile.

“Shouldn’t that be flowers?”

“No, the aroma of roasted java beans works for me.  And I don’t often let anything worry me.  Things work out one way or another, for better or worse, so why risk getting an ulcer?”

“Have you got a plan?”

“Yeah, I’m going to find out who wanted Arnie killed and deal with the situation.”

They drank coffee.  Logan had a piece of Key lime pie, and they talked mainly about old times and Arnie in particular.

“I’m going to talk to someone, if he’s at home,” Logan said, standing up to leave.  “Stay here till I get back, I won’t be long.”

Margie watched him walk out the door and angle across the lot to vanish into the night.  Wondered what the hell she would do if he didn’t make it back.  He had left her the car keys, but where would she go?  New York City might be a bustling metropolis, but it was also home to a great many lonely people.  Her life had suddenly taken a nosedive.  Logan was now her only hope to get it back on line.

Benny had kept well away from the house since the shooting on the pier.  He had been staying at a friend’s apartment in the Bowery, sleeping on the couch and walking the streets during the day.  Leaving the city was not an option at the moment.  He had no money, and had never lived anywhere else in his life.  As the days passed he felt safer.  Decided that Jack Trask wouldn’t give a shit whether he’d drowned or survived.  Maybe it would now be safe to go back home.  He had a stash of weed and a few hundred dollars.  If he was careful he could sneak in and get it, maybe crash out for a few hours, then find somewhere else to live.  He had an address for his father in Chicago.  They hadn’t spoken in years, but blood was thicker than water, he supposed.  The old man might let him stay in the high-rise apartment ‒ or condo as he preferred to call it ‒ for a while if he paid his way.

He entered the brownstone by way of the fire escape at the rear.  Shimmied the lock of the entry door to the third floor with an out of date credit card and let himself into his apartment.  It had been searched.  Maybe Trask
did
want him whacked.  He refrained from switching a light on.  It could feasibly attract more than moths.  He went through to the bedroom, got down on his knees, pulled a section of baseboard away from the wall and grinned.  The space he had created by digging out a brick was still filled by the zip lock bag he had hidden there.  He pocketed the thin wad of bills and then sat on the edge of the bed and rolled himself a joint.  Within a minute of firing it up everything seemed better.  The dope had reached his brain and caused him to feel euphoric and totally relaxed.  Time stuttered and he had no sense of how long he had been there, and didn’t care.  His usual anxiety and fear, due to his lifestyle, was dulled. He began to giggle, but didn’t know why.  He finished the joint and crushed the end of it out on the top of the night table, unmindful of burning the ends of his finger and thumb as he then lay back on the crumpled, dirty comforter and imagined being sixteen again, planning a future that included being a rock star and living in a Hugh Hefner-style mansion full of willing, busty babes.

Logan checked the street, then walked up the steps to the front door and found it to be closed but not locked.  He entered and went up to the third floor and stopped outside a distressed wood door with flaking paint and a cracked plastic number seven screwed onto it. There was no light shining out onto the dark landing from the gap at the bottom of the door.  He slowly turned the cheap nickel knob, but the door was locked.  He had a choice, knock or break in.  He drew the gun he had taken from Arnie’s from the pocket of his fleece, stood back and kicked out with all the force he could muster.  The door flew back with a cracking, splitting of wood that he thought would wake up everyone in the building.  But in this neighborhood he would be surprised if anyone gave a damn what was happening, as long as they were not in harm’s way.

Benny was hallucinating; laying naked on a large round, revolving bed with a bevy of equally nude and smiling, red-lipped Playmates around him.  He was fondling them, and they were pleasuring him.  One was giving him a blowjob, another was straddling his face, and his tongue was darting in and out of her hot, wet cooze.  He heard a noise, but decided that it was from outside the mansion he had fabricated in his mind, and that they were probably builders working on an extension to his castle of love.

Logan moved to the side, closed the broken door as best as he could behind him and listened.  He couldn’t hear a thing, but could smell the pungent odor of marijuana in the stale air.  He moved with the stealth of a leopard stalking its prey, entered the small bedroom and saw the figure lying on the bed.

At first, Logan thought that he was viewing a corpse.  The slim male was unmoving, pale-faced, with sunken eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling in the gloom.  Stepping closer to the bed, he reached out with his left hand, gripped the guy’s ankle and shook it hard, and then backed-up quickly as the figure shot up into a sitting position.

Benny was coming down.  His flight of weed-induced imagination plinked out of existence, and instead of being in a large, sumptuous chamber being pleasured by several women, he was back in the real world and lying on his own sweat and semen stained bed.  And he could make out the shadowy form of a very tall guy standing motionless with a gun in his hand.  Paranoia and panic melded in his brain.  Trask had obviously had someone watching the house, front and back, just in case he returned.  He had been stupid to think that he was in the clear.  Like a dumb critter he had slunk back to his lair in what he had thought was the safety of darkness, and the hunters had known that, given time, he would.

Logan said nothing.  Just kept the Glock trained on the now twitching, agitated young guy and waited.

“Don’t, please,” Benny whined, and a stain appeared at the crotch of his pants and began to spread as his bladder voided.  “I won’t say a word to anyone.  Let me talk to Mr. Trask.”

“Mr. Trask wants you whacked, Benny,” Logan said.  “You know too much.”

“I don’t know fuck all, man.  I just do what I’m told and keep my mouth shut.”

“So what went down at the pier?”

“I got lifted out on the street, and was told to arrange a meet with the cop.  He turned up at the pier and all hell broke loose.  I panicked and jumped in the river.”

“So you sold your handler out?”

“I’m not a fuckin’ animal,” Benny said, finding some resolve from the residue of drug in his brain.  “Nobody
handles
me.  It was business.  He paid me for information, is all.”

Logan moved in quick, grasped Benny’s right hand, which he had raised up to wipe his running nose with the back of, and selected the index finger and bent it backwards till Benny howled. He had measured the force he applied, tearing the connective tissue around the middle joint but holding off dislocating or breaking it.

“What you need to know is that I don’t work for Trask, and that Arnie Newman is my friend,” Logan said.  “You have a choice, talk to me, help me, or die where you lay.”

It took Benny a minute to assimilate the pain and find a small measure of composure.  His finger had already swollen up like one of the blood sausages that his grandmother had served up regularly when he was a kid.

“Y…you broke my fuckin’ finger,” Benny whimpered.

“It’s just badly sprained,” Logan said.  “And it’s the least of your worries, believe me.”

Benny looked up into the man’s eyes.  They just stared back at him, unblinking and full of menace.  “What else can I tell you?” he asked.

“Everything you know,” Logan said.  “And if I think you’re lying to me I’ll tie you up, give Trask a call and tell him that you’re at home and receiving visitors.”

“All I’ve done is small stuff for Trask,” Benny said.  “Followed a couple of guys and delivered a package.  I’m not on his payroll.”

“What about Fallon?”

“I’ve never met him and don’t want to.  He’s connected.  The guy is runnin’ for mayor, but he’s an asshole.  He heads up a lot of legit companies as a front and rips off pension funds.”

“What else?”

“He gets rid of anyone he decides could be a threat to him.  I know that Trask and his crew do the dirty work.  He just points them and keeps out of the picture.”

“So Fallon will have told them to kill Arnie?”

Benny nodded and said, “Yeah, he must have been diggin’ around and got too close to the action.  A lot of cops are happy to take more than just free coffee and donuts, but Arnie was pretty straight.  Believe it or not I liked the guy.”

“Let’s hope he makes it, then, because he’s still alive, hanging on.”

“If Fallon knows that he survived, he’ll send someone to whack him,” Benny said.  “And it could be another cop that gets the contract.”

Logan took that on board.  A dirty cop could get to Arnie.  It would only take a second to stick him with a rig full of H or morphine.  But he couldn’t cover all the bases.  “Get your skinny ass in the shower,” he said to Benny.  “You stink, and you’re still high.”

Benny knew that it wasn’t a request.  He kept his damaged right hand close to his chest and did what he was told.  After a couple of minutes under jets of cold water he was feeling clear-headed, and after toweling himself dry he found some cleaner clothes to put on.

“Okay, let’s go,” Logan said.  “You can help me out, and in turn help yourself.”

“What’s to stop me doin’ a runner?”

“The fact that you’re already on the run.  And until Fallon and his muscle are dealt with you’ll be looking over your shoulder and waiting for a bullet every minute of every day.”

“And just what the fuck do you think you can do to change anythin’?”

“Whatever I need to.  And right now I need to negate any threat against my friend.  In turn that will benefit you.”

“Who are you?” Benny asked, looking up at the stranger that he wanted to believe could make it safe for him to get back to his life, however messed up it was.

“My name’s Logan.  Now let’s get out of here.  I have a lady waiting in a diner for me, and you look like you could use some food and a cup of coffee.”

He
felt a whole lot better.  Lennox had gone in the store and bought some hydrogen peroxide, a roll of bandage and a pack of Marlboro.  After lighting up and taking a few deep drags, Frankie had initially felt dizzy.  But it soon passed.  He was back with Miss. Nicotine, and felt better for it, however bad it was for his health.  The Surgeon General’s warnings were wasted on him. He accepted that smoking could kill him, but took into consideration that so could being in a RTA, or falling off a ladder, and a million other things.  He had grown up in the Pittsburgh metro area, which was in the top ten most polluted cities in America. It had seemed at the time like half the population was suffering from asthma or some other even more chronic lung problem.

After swabbing his ankle and bandaging it he felt much better.  The bitch had scarred him for life with her teeth, but had got hers.  He smiled.  Hurting and killing people turned his wheels, and unlike almost all other endeavors, it was both a highly paid and tax-free occupation.

“Let’s go see if Gus the geek can help us out,” Lennox said.  “He’ll be able to link the broad’s cell to a computer and trace it when we call her.”

Gus Martin was an Afghanistan vet.  He had gone out there feeling like John Wayne, but after only three weeks had stepped on an IED and lost both his legs up to the knees.  He had prostheses, but chose to spend most of his time in a wheelchair in front of a computer.  Strapping on artificial limbs and walking like a robot was not on his list of things to do.  He was now a hacker, and capable of making big bucks by doing illegal work for both individuals and companies from the comfort of his swivel chair in a doublewide trailer on a site on the edge of Grassy Bay, within sight and sound of JFK International Airport.

Lennox phoned Gus and said they were outside, as he walked up the ramp to the door. Frankie limped along behind him.  They could hear an Eagles track;
Victim of Love
being played too loudly inside.

“Hey guys, how’re ya doin’?” Gus said after using a remote to release the door lock.

“Doin’ fine, Gus.  But we need some of your magic to trace someone.”

“So come in, take the load off and have a cold one while you give me the details.”

Fifteen minutes later, Gus was all set up to trace the call that Lennox was going to make to Margie Newman’s cell.

“All I need is for you to keep her talkin’ for a couple of minutes, max, and I’ll be able to give you a location,” Gus said.

Lennox tapped in the number.

They entered the diner and went back to where Margie was sitting and staring into the middle distance.

“This is Benny,” Logan said as they sat side by side opposite her.  “He was Arnie’s CI, or stool pigeon.  He’s one of those losers who play both sides to the middle and usually end up dead in an alley from an overdose, or with a bullet in the back of their heads.  He can’t be trusted, but we’ll have to hope that he has enough sense to help us, because that’s the only way he’ll get out of the current situation he’s in alive.”  Logan then turned to Benny and said, “This is Margie, Arnie’s wife, and because of you she could soon be a widow.  What you do gets people hurt bad or killed, Benny.  But you know that and don’t care.  Am I right?”

Benny turned his attention to Margie.  “I just do what I need to, to get by,” he said.  “I didn’t know that your husband was going to be whack…er, shot, Mrs. Newman.  They said they wanted a meet with him, and so I arranged it.  I had no choice.”

Margie studied the gaunt face of the young man.  Saw anxiety, pain, fear and an underlying compassion in his eyes, and knew that he was not an evil person, just one of life’s flotsam, coping the best way he knew how to in the human jungle of NYC.

“Okay, Benny,” Margie said.  “My only concern now is for Arnie to get well, and for the scum that did it to be taken off the street.  What happened to your finger?”

Benny turned and looked at Logan.

Logan had ordered a fresh pot of coffee.  When it came he refilled Margie’s cup and poured one for Benny and himself while they talked.

“He got lucky,” Logan said.  “I was going to do a lot more than sprain a finger, but decided that he would be more use to us in one piece.”

“You have a real attitude,” Benny said.  “I avoid violence if I can.”

Before Logan could reply, Margie’s phone rang.

“Do I answer it?”

Logan nodded.  “Put it on speaker.  If you don’t know the caller, hand it to me.”

Margie accepted the call, even though it was a withheld number.  Said, “Hello,” and could hear someone breathing.

“Margie?” Lennox finally said, a second before Margie was going to disconnect.  “I’m a friend of Arnie’s.  I heard what happened and wondered how he’s doin’.”

“Who are you, and how did you get my number?” Margie said.

“My name is Lennox, and we need to talk about your hubby.”

Margie looked at Logan and shook her head.  She didn’t know the caller.  Logan reached out and took the phone.  Thumbed off the speaker.  “Hi, Lennox,” he said.  “What do you want?”

“Who the hell―?”

“Cut the crap.  You work for Trask, and are probably tracing this call from whatever sewer you’re in at the moment.”

“You must be Logan.  Am I right?” Lennox replied, happy to keep the guy on the line.

“Yeah,” Logan said, already feeling a lead ball forming in his stomach, because he knew that the only people who knew he was with Margie was her brother and his wife, and Della.  “And you must be a lot dumber than you sound.  Keeping me talking is of no use to you.  This cell will be switched off with the SIM card removed and dumped when I end the call.  All you’ll know is where we are now, not where we’ll be in ten minutes time.  And you didn’t do a proper job searching Arnie’s house.  The paperwork and flash drive were under the flooring in the loft.  I have them now.”

“You think you’re clever, Logan, but you ain’t.  Runnin’ won’t help you.  We have your description.  You’ll never get out of the city.”

“I’ve got no intention of running, dummy.  I’m coming for you, Trask, and anyone else involved.  And then I’m going to take Fallon out of the picture.  But by then you won’t be around to worry about any of it.”

“Words,” Lennox said, although the low, calm voice was full of deadly intent.  “You might want to tell Margie that goin’ to her brother’s house got him and his bitch wife whacked.”

“If that happened, then you’re a dead man walking, Lennox.  And that’s not a threat, it’s a promise,” Logan said before switching the phone off, handing it back to Margie and asking her to remove the card from it.  It was a small phone, and he had big fingers.

“Tell me,” Margie said as she fumbled the card out and placed it on the table.  Being a cop’s wife for so long had given her better than average insight.  She knew by Logan’s physical tension and facial expression that something was very wrong.

There was no easy way to say it.  “The guy on the phone had been to your brother’s house,” he said. “That’s how he got your number.”

“Tony?…Ellen?” Margie whispered.  “Please God, no.”

“He told me that they were dead,” Logan said, reaching out and grasping Margie’s hand and holding onto it firmly.  “We need to find out for sure.  He may have just been saying it for effect.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?”

“No.”

“It’s my fault for going there, I should have―”

“You going to your brother’s house had nothing to do with it,” Logan said.  “They were looking for you, so checked you out to find a link.  The only fault for whatever has and will happen is Fallon’s.”

“And what can you do against someone like him, with the people he has around him?”

“A lot more than the law can,” Logan said.  “The old saying about strength in numbers doesn’t apply.  I have the advantage.  They don’t know what I’m capable of, or what lengths I’ll go to.  Fallon will never be the mayor of New York.  If he’s lucky he’ll have his day in court and spend the rest of his life behind bars.  But I really don’t think that will happen.  His luck has run out; he just doesn’t know it, yet.”

“He’s like a Mafia boss,” Benny said.  “Don’t underestimate him, Logan.  He has people at every level workin’ for him, for the money or because he has them threatened or maimed, or puts pressure on them in a dozen other ways.  He’ll find you.”

“No, Benny, he won’t.  I’m like a ghost.  I don’t have family, a job, an address, or know anyone that knows where I am for him to lean on.  With your help,
I’ll
find him.”

Benny was almost a believer.  Logan was like some big, unstoppable superhero from movies he’d watched in his youth.  There was an aura of capability that was impossible to ignore.  He was like a reinforced concrete wall that even a steel wrecking ball would bounce off. 

Margie couldn’t speak.  The news that Tony and Ellen had been murdered began to consume her.  Not only was her husband hovering between life and death with a serious brain injury, but the two other nearest and dearest people in her life were now gone.  The diner’s walls, furniture and customers seemed to close in on her, to be sucked dry of color and become gray, clouding her vision as they began to coalesce and spin like a bank of revolving fog.  It was as if she were in the center of a large, totally soundless hurricane; a circle that was starved of oxygen.

“Margie. Margie,” Logan said, dipping a paper napkin in one of the glasses of iced water on the table and squeezing it out before holding it against her hot brow.

Margie blinked and stared at him.

“You passed out,” Logan said.  “We need to get out of here.  Do you think that you can walk to the car?”

Margie gently pushed the hand holding the wet napkin away.  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, but felt that she would never be fine again.

Before leaving the diner, Logan used the pay phone in the lobby to call 911, reported gunshots at the address of Tony and Ellen and then hung up. If they
had
been murdered it would be in a late news bulletin.

With Margie in the rear and Benny in the front passenger seat, Logan drove away from The Flatbush diner.  He had first, on a whim, replaced the SIM card in the phone, switched it on and slipped it into the pocket of a jerkin hanging with other coats on a rack near the front desk. If Lennox did have the resources to track the cell, then hopefully he would end up following a total stranger on a wild-goose chase.

He had left nothing in the cheap hotel.  His rucksack was in the trunk of the Taurus. The first thing he needed to do now was find a safe place to stay for the night.  Margie was exhausted, emotionally drained and in a bad place.  He drove across the toll bridge of The Narrows onto Staten Island, which had been where he had been born and raised.  It was like home ground to him.

The Blue Heron Motel was tucked away on Wild Avenue, set back from the road but only a minute from the W Shore Expressway.  The immediate area was a picture of neglect.  It was a perfect place to lie low and not be found.

Logan parked in the lot.  There were only four other vehicles outside doors of the one-storey L-shaped motel that had probably looked fine back in the sixties but was now a seedy ramshackle place where couples in search of a bed could pay by the hour if they had need to make out in cheap, depressing surroundings.

“We’re a party of three.  I’d like two connecting rooms for a couple of nights,” Logan said to the old guy behind the desk in the office.  “What’s the best rate you can offer me?”

Murray Baylis hardly looked at him.  His eyesight was shot, even though he was wearing the spectacles that he had bought new in Wal-Mart at the turn of the century.  His rheumy pale-blue eyes hadn’t focused on much for several years, and it didn’t bother him unduly, due to him having decided that he’d seen most what he needed to during his eighty years on God’s green earth.

“It’s a little quiet this time of year,” Murray said in a reedy voice.  “Two hundred in cash should do it if we skip the registration card and save on tax.”

“Sounds good,” Logan said, thinking that the old guy was shrewd and knew that a party in need of two rooms at this time of night, and in a place like this, would be happy to get a deal that put bills straight in his pocket.

“Numbers eight and nine,” Murray said, handing Logan two keys in exchange for four bills that he squinted at to check that the portrait on the front of each was of Ulysses S Grant.  When the man left the office, Murray watched and noted that there was a woman and another guy with him.

Margie put the few belongings she had on one of the twin beds in room nine.  She then closed the adjoining door, kicked her shoes off and climbed into the cold bed, needing to be alone and let everything that had happened sink in.  She was at the lowest ebb of her life, didn’t know how to incorporate the events that had transpired, and cried herself to sleep over an hour later.

“Where do you go from here?” Benny said as he switched on the small TV that was bracketed to the wall above a chipped and scratched bureau.

Logan was over by the coffeemaker, setting it going after carefully washing it out and refilling it. “Not me,
we
,” he said.  “You tell me all you know about Trask and his crew, and the addresses of any locations they frequent, and in the morning we’ll go and talk to one of them, find out where Trask is and let it play out.”