Twenty-One
“Fucking hell,” Rook spat, ducking down to the floor.
He’d been seen. No doubt about that. Madge—or at least he thought it was Madge—flashed a gun in her hand, and he fell right back into old habits. Survival at any cost. Running his hand along the edge of the shattered glass cabinet, he cupped what he found, then tossed it at the woman’s face. In the nova-brightness of the front room’s overhead lights, the broken glass and metal fragments sparkled and glittered as they flew into Madge’s face, a rainbow spray of edge and pain.
Rook didn’t stick around to see if he hurt her. Turning on his heel, he was off, heading for the docking bay door set into the right corner of the building. It was hard going. His feet were being sliced up by the damage left on the shop’s floor, and his toes were growing sticky with blood. Madge’s screams chased him, her swearing peppery and profane amid his panicked gasps for air. A gunshot went off, and a corner of a cinder-block column he’d just ducked past exploded into a hail of dust and cement fragments.
The seemingly practical design of back rooms and showcases had somehow become a deadly maze, one where placing his left hand on the walls would only lead him further into trouble. There were too many cut-throughs, ones he’d chosen to make it easier to move large collectibles into but now were blocked by crates and boxes filled with what used to stock the front room so repairs could begin.
“Too damned efficient. Fucking movers. Why didn’t you leave me a way out?” Rook muttered, having to backtrack again. He and Dante’d gone straight up to the loft or he’d have seen the mess.
The back room was a disaster, and he couldn’t find a clear path to the bay. He needed to get something on his feet. If the sound of his panting didn’t draw Madge to him, the trail of bloody footprints he was leaving behind were as plain as a dotted line in an old Family Circus cartoon.
He missed the soft beeps and whirs of toys and collectibles, mostly because the low sheet of noise would have masked his movements. Only the air-conditioning units on the cold displays rattled about, barely a whisper of buzzing to keep him company while he hunted for something to put on his feet.
Most of the common things he kept in the storeroom were things he could place in the Potter’s Field display cases up front to catch a tourist’s eye. Rook didn’t need flashy and pretty. He needed solid and serviceable. He found a pair of gold-sequined moccasins worn in an old Flash Gordon movie, much too small to get his toes into even if the bells dangling from the shoe’s laces weren’t bad enough.
There were even less practical things, mostly feminine in nature, and for the first time in his life, Rook wished he hadn’t said no to the pair of platform boots someone tried to pass off as wardrobe from a bad ’70s rock star movie.
“Okay, what do I have in here?” Keeping an ear out for Madge, he slowly pulled out a box on one of the bottom shelves. His feet were beginning to ache, and panic was making Rook’s pulse race, but he took a breath. “Get a hold of yourself, Stevens. Just like a job. This is just like a job. Focus. Oh, fucking bless you, Charlene, for your label machine fetish.”
Rook found a pair of black leather hi-top Converses tucked into a box marked robot movie shoes. A half size too big for him, they were roomy on Rook’s feet, but he tied them up tightly, wrapping the excess laces around his ankles. He squished about in the soles as he took his first step, but there was no pain.
“Got everything out, then,” he murmured. “And for fuck’s sakes, stop talking to yourself.”
It was a bad habit, one he’d picked up when he’d done his first job. Keeping up a constant monologue helped push his fears back when he’d been dangling forty feet in the air off the edge of a balcony after the owners of the mansion he’d just robbed came home. Talking to himself made him feel less alone then.
Now it would only get him killed.
A shadow moved through the subdued blue tinge of the back storerooms. If he could get around to the front and around the right corner, it was a long sprint to the rear entrance. To the left, the stairwell was closer, and the loft was defensible, with its thick, heavy door and locks, but he’d be trapped, unable to get out or contact anyone.
“Not like they can smoke me out. So going to kill Dante for taking my phone and laptop.” Rook crouched, seeing another long shadow join the first. There was a tinge of voices, lost under the hum of a nearby compressor. “Shit, I can open a goddamn window and shout at someone down on the sidewalk if I’ve got to. Up it is.”
He didn’t have much in the way of weapons. Everything heavy and substantial was crated up and in the warehouse miles away. A hockey stick from a cancelled wizard’s show was the best Rook could do, but its length would make wielding it among the tight spaces too difficult. He got three steps out into the corridor when someone came out of the stairwell, swinging the door wide. Caught between diving back into the storeroom or attacking, Rook grabbed the first heavy thing he could find, a tiny bat from a ballpark giveaway.
“Fuck it. Attack, then run up.” He steeled himself for the sprint. Then his world exploded into a confetti of crazy and noise.
There were shouts behind him as the shadows became people. Madge’s screams for him to stop were joined by a deeper, unfamiliar bark. Booms followed his exit, and Rook winced at the sound of breaking glass and more swearing. Raising the bat above his head, he launched at the person coming out from behind the stairwell door, hoping to catch them off guard.
Her blonde high ponytail was Rook’s first hint he’d made a mistake, and then he caught a glimpse of Charlene’s look of horrified surprise as he brought the bat down. Turning, Rook tried to angle it away from the woman, but the wetness in the loose Converses twisted him about and he stumbled, slamming into the corridor’s brick wall. Pain shocked down his arm, the crenulated surface digging through his thin shirt and into his stitched skin. Something gave, tearing apart, and Rook dropped the bat, his fingers too numb to hold on to the handle.
“Shit, Char. Come on! Get upstairs!” Another shot rang out, this time the bullet slamming into a wall near his head. “Fuck… go!”
“God, Rook.” Her expression turned cruel, then pitying. “You are so stupid. So very stupid.”
“Dispatch says there’s a pileup on the Sunset ramp off of the 101. She doesn’t know if there’s anyone getting through,” Hank screamed at Dante. “Do you have the sirens on?”
“Lights and noise. Both on,” Dante shouted back. “You can’t go in with me. Can’t risk it.”
“Montoya, you can just fuck—”
“I’m serious, Camden. You can’t hear a fucking thing, and if there’s shit going down in there, I don’t want you to get in the line of fire.” He cut through the traffic, pushing cars aside in a stream of churning lights and hailing noise. “I can’t fucking believe I did this. Canicas, what the hell was I thinking taking his damned phone?”
“Watch out for the bus! The bus, Dante! Watch the fucking bus!”
Hank gripped the dashboard, bracing himself against the car door as Dante slid the sedan’s tires up over the curb to avoid a bus swerving into their lane. The car careened off the cement buffer, slamming hard back onto the asphalt, and drifted to the left, hydroplaning on a shallow pond pooling over a blocked drainage grate.
“God, you’re going to get us killed.”
“Hold on,” Dante warned his partner. The unmarked car screeched around a corner, and Dante was forced to slow down as he passed through a red light, modulating the siren to warn oncoming traffic. “We’re a block out. Just… I need you to get someone here, Hank.”
“We’re going to look like assholes if he’s up there chewing his nails.”
Hank’s grumble was nearly as loud as his shouting. Dante risked giving his partner a stern look.
“Shit, I’m just saying, he might be okay. You go in without backup, and if someone’s there, the captain’s going to string you up by your balls, Montoya.”
“I called Charlene to let him out.” Something gurgled in Dante’s insides, and fear crinkled his throat. “Fuck.”
“Just drive, Montoya,” Hank ordered as he tapped back into the car’s data connection. “I’m going to tear Dispatch a new asshole.”
“Five-minute monologue, or am I just supposed to stand here while you beat the shit out of me for something I don’t know about?” Rook edged against the wall, clutching his injured shoulder. “’Cause for the life of me, I’ve got no fucking clue what you’re looking for here.”
Charlene’s betrayal settled wrong in him. Worse than wrong. It gouged out a part of his soul. He should have known… should have suspected something, especially since he’d found her tit-deep in his chilled closet looking for a damned costume, of all things, but instead, he’d bitten at one of the oldest tropes in the book—the dumb blonde.
With the rear entrance door at his back, and for all intents and purposes, about a mile away, Rook only had one thing going for him—his mouth. What he couldn’t do was let the blockheaded mountain walking behind Madge get a hold of him. So far it looked like none of them could hit worth a damn unless it was to shoot an old man in a slow-moving town car, but he’d make a pretty steady target sprinting down the hall. Unless he could get something between him and them, Rook knew he was shit out of luck.
“So, nice long con?” Rook calculated the time he’d known Charlene, actually known her, as he took a step back to distance himself from the loft’s stairs. “Years. Did you play the brainless tit-and-wiggle for everyone, Char? Or just me? Because I’ve got to hand it to you, I figured you were about as smart as a dog-chewed stick.”
It was still closer, but there was no way he could shove Charlene out of the way and get the stairwell door shut behind him. The lack of a lock was also a deterrent. He’d have nothing to bolt it down so he could make it up the stairs and shut the loft door.
The back entrance was still his only hope.
Another step back, and Charlene danced with him, taking a step forward. Madge and her scowling shadow fell in around the corner, tightening the space up. Rook eyed the thug, gauging his quickness. Sometimes the big ones could fool you. He’d known a Samoan fire dancer who once crossed the speedway in less than ten seconds when one of the balloon girls screamed for help. Of course, Rook recalled, it’d also taken the enraged man less than five seconds to nearly rip the guy’s arm off, so there was that to look forward to if he didn’t make it in time.
Madge was worrisome because of the gun. She waved it about, her fingers trembling and squeezing down on the trigger as she glanced at Charlene. Something was off between the two women, something Rook couldn’t quite place until Charlene’s head dipped into a shadow and the resemblance between them became clear.
“Fuck, you’re sisters?” Rook guessed offhandedly. They’d be closer to mother-daughter or aunt-niece from the wear and tear on Charlene’s face, but even if she’d faked a low intelligence, vanity and ego weren’t something people sublimated well. She bit a little, smoothing her forehead with her fingers. “Should have seen it, but… I didn’t really get a good look at Madge. The name, though. Really? Madge? Or did you hork that up just for the cons you ran with Pigeon?”
“Rook honey.” Charlene crooked her finger at him. “You and I need to talk about the stash you kept from before you quit doing jobs.”
“Babe, I’ve got nothing. Everything I had went into this place.” He faked a grimace, clutching his arm tighter. He didn’t have to put too much of a spin on it. He’d definitely torn his arm open. Blood was gushing from the wound, and his fingers seemed to be doing a piss-poor job of keeping his fluids inside where they needed to be.
“No, see, that’s where you’re lying,” Charlene hissed back. “I know better. Dani knew better.”
The pinup-girl image she’d so carefully cultivated turned ugly, more a caricature of a woman chasing a moose and squirrel than the sexpot Rook knew her as. The smear of red on her lips looked more like the blood running down the length of his arm, and the clicks of her heels on the cement floor were as loud as gunshots with every step she took toward him.
“Dani was fucking crazy, Char,” Rook pointed out. “Delusional. She was also the crackpot who’d thought I somehow smuggled forty gold bars out of that last house we did. Do you know how goddamn heavy those things are? Over twenty-five pounds each! And I tossed forty of them into my backpack and whistled my way down the outside wall?”
“Not the gold.” She dismissed his claim with a shrug. “The gems. She kept track of those. Even had a fake primed to give to that cop, but he went off all half-cocked and wanted something else. Something bigger. See, it never came up on the market. That big piece of ice. She knew you still had it.”
“So she brought a fake with her for what?” He shook his head and apparently went a step too far, because the bald mountain behind Madge shifted and was suddenly much too close for Rook’s comfort. Working his arm up, Rook shook his hand, sending more drops onto the floor. “Look, you three can walk out of here still. No one knows you’re here—”
“That cop does.” Madge spoke up. “He called Mom, remember? I say we kill him, toss the place one last time, and you be here acting like you found him dead. Cop’s already fucked him. He won’t be back for a while, right?”
“God, I feel sorry for your sex life, Madge,” Rook muttered. “Especially if guys fuck you once and they’re out the door.”
The gun came up, and this time it was steady, pointing straight at Rook’s chest. Sneering much like her mother, Madge snarled, “Keep talking, asshole. There’s nothing I’d like better than to shove this up your ass and empty it. I’ve been wanting to kill you since we started this whole goddamn mess, but Mom didn’t want to.”
“It’s a simple question, Rook,” Charlene interjected. “You’ve got a few million dollars worth of jewelry hidden here. Where is it?”
“If I had it, like I’ll tell you, and after you get Gojira there to pack it up, you guys waltz out of here and let me live?” He was beginning to shake, getting colder with each inch he crept back. The wall somehow wavered in, and Rook ducked, not wanting to hit his head on it. “I’m not as stupid as your kid looks, Char. Even if I had, telling you would only get me a bullet in the back of my head. Madge is all primed for it.”
“Not the back,” Madge snorted. “In your mouth. Just so I can say I’m the one who finally shut you the fuck up.”
“Morris is here to help you remember, Rook.” Charlene laughed at the grimace Rook gave her. “Look, I’ve been taking this place apart bit by bit. I’ve found most of your empty cubbyholes, but you’re a sneaky asshole, kid. You always have been. A sneaky, slimy asshole no one likes and no one trusts. Hell, even your own mom didn’t want to be around you. Madge might not be as smart as you, but at least I can stand her. Can’t say that about you.”
“Nice, and to think I gave you those burner cards.” The ground in front of him should have been coated with drops of his blood, but Rook couldn’t risk looking down to check. Hoping he’d shaken off enough to wet the tiled area between the stairs and the rear door, he chanced leaning against the wall, needing its support. For once his procrastination about painting the floor with a layer of grit would pay off, despite all the times he’d nearly killed himself walking on the slick spot after a light rain.
“Those cards paid for Morris here. How’s it feel to know you paid to get your own grandfather killed?” Madge waved the gun again. “This is taking too long. Morris, just grab him. You can’t miss this time. He’s the only big-nosed skinny guy around.”
“I do not have a big nose.” It was now or never. Morris’s bulk took up much of the slender corridor, and it was all the opening Rook needed.
He got a few feet down the corridor, or at least so he thought. The world folded in on him suddenly, and everything either slowed down or sped up. Rook wasn’t quite sure. He felt Morris’s hands in his hair, then the pain of being jerked back just as the narrow hallway exploded with sound. It felt as if firecrackers were popping down the side of his cheek, and a rush of cold air somehow got into his marrow, stiffening his entire body. He was leaking out too much blood, or too quickly. Either way, Rook knew he was losing hold on his consciousness. He just had to make it to the door.
A slat of light opened up at the end of the corridor, and Rook blinked against the stain it left on his eyes. Morris twisted, screaming in Rook’s ear. Then the ground slid out from under him. Under Morris’s dead weight, Rook tumbled down. All he could feel was wet and ice, a glacial chill moving across his skin. Then his head slammed into the floor, leaving him drowning and helpless in a sea of fading stars.
The door kicked in easily, flying into the far wall, and Dante stepped in, the muzzle of his gun aimed at the ground as he worked his back against the wall. Dante saw the flash of a firearm at the end of the hallway and Rook fold to the floor, a large, hulking man landing on top of him. The smell of gunpowder and blood hung in a rank curtain across the hall, and at the other end, Charlene and Madge stood partially silhouetted in a corona of light.
“Behind you, Montoya,” Hank called out, and Dante almost turned, ready to shout at his partner to go back to the car as Madge drew a bead on them.
“Police! Drop your weapon!” He pulled his gun up, aiming for the shorter of the women. Madge turned her head, looking at her mother, her face caught in an angry grimace. “Last warning, Madge. Put the gun down now before—”
It was Charlene who began the gunfight. Pulling the automatic out of her daughter’s hands, she squeezed the trigger, popping a round off. Dante dove down, praying Hank sought cover behind him. Rolling to the side, he angled his Glock up to fire, but Charlene was gone.
“Hank, check on Rook. And cover them.” Dante forced himself to run past his lover, his legs growing heavier with each step he took away from Rook’s prone body. “Shoot her if she gives you shit.”
He swore he saw Rook breathing, focused on the faint pull of his rib cage Dante’d seen beneath his bloodied shirt. Madge cowered as he went by, and Hank swore something fierce. His own footing faltered when he hit the odd tile space near the stairs, and Dante grabbed at the far wall to keep his balance, smearing a trail of blood behind him as he stepped onto the cement floor.
“Cuervo’s going to be okay. Looked like his arm again. Not a lot. Just a little bit,” he consoled himself while he ducked around a pillar in the dark confines behind the main room.
He’d not paid much attention to the warren Rook had laid out behind his store’s front area, and now Dante regretted not intimately memorizing the floor plan when he had the chance. Charlene had the advantage, spending months in the building, going over every inch of the place as she looked for what JoJo and Janet described as a silly rumor. It seemed fantastical that Rook would have held onto the biggest haul of his thieving career, stashing it away somewhere in a building where anyone could run across it.
“If what you were looking for was actually here, Charlene, don’t you think you’d have found it by now?” Dante called out. He banged his knees against a pile of heavy boxes, and he bit down on his lip, listening for the woman’s reply. “How long did you look? Months? A year? Two years? How many people have you and your daughter killed for nothing more than a story?”
“You don’t know him, asshole!” Charlene’s voice echoed from somewhere in the front room. “You think just because you’ve fucked him, you know him? Do you know how many guys have had his ass? Shit, most of the carnies dipped into that piece of shit before he was even fifteen, and none of them could tell you if he was lying or not.”
A rattle followed, chains and metal on something solid. Dante tried to remember if the front door had been blocked off from the outside or if it’d just been locked up. Nothing came to mind but the splatter of blood on Rook’s side and the pale moon of his face nearly hidden beneath his tangled brown hair.
“I will not shoot her.” Dante pushed down the fury Charlene’s words pulled out of him. “Dios en el cielo, please help me not shoot her.”
Something broke, shattering loud enough for Dante’s nerves to crawl to the surface. He could hear sirens finally, hearty wailing creeping through the open back door. Sending a quick prayer that one of the wails belonged to an ambulance, he stepped into the main room, shielding himself behind a pillar.
Charlene was there, waiting. She stood in an uneven stance, a heel stem missing from one of her high fuck-me shoes. Her hands were steady, primed to take the shot, but the barrel of her gun shimmied, a tight circle of nerves from too hard of a grip.
“You shoot me now, Charlene, and there’s no going back for you,” Dante warned, ducking back behind the pillar. A single pane of glass remained intact on a display case near the entrance, and with the lights on full, he could see Charlene’s reflection. Her hands were wavering, the gun beginning to drop down. “A lot of people have died already for this. Do you want to add a cop to that list?”
“It was just supposed to be him… and Dani. Finally got that bitch dead, and then the cops showed up.” Charlene lost her balance, and Dante almost slid out from behind the column, but she caught herself before he could get clear. “But Jane—fucking Jane—she brought the cops down on us. Ran out on Madge and called the police before Rook could get what he fucking deserved.”
“So you planned to kill Dani, then? What about the other Betties?” Dante spotted a bank of light switches on the column next to him, each labeled carefully with locations. Dousing his area in darkness would help cover him long enough to take a good shot at Charlene, but he couldn’t chance her firing as he ducked out. Keeping her reflection in view, he called out, “And why kill Rook? After all he’s done for you.”
“Done for me? Please! No one does anything for anyone,” Charlene scoffed. “The other two Betties, God, they were a joke. Madge didn’t even know I killed them. They wanted more than their share—like they spent hours tearing this place apart and schlepping shit back and forth for that asshole. So I said, fuck it. It was just going to be me and Madge.”
“Doesn’t explain why you wanted Rook dead.” Dante heard boots in the corridor, a concentrated stamp of shuffling whispers of leather on cement. Twisting his shoulder, he caught sight of a SWAT-vested cop slowly coming out of the back room, a combat assault rifle up at the ready. Dante moved his jacket aside, showing his badge, then nodded to the front room where Charlene ranted on.
“If we let Rook walk away from this, he’d have been after us like white on rice. Once he gets his teeth into something, he doesn’t let go,” she called out. “And if I’ve fucked this up, at least I’m going to take you with me.”
Charlene got one shot off, and Dante stepped out from behind the column, firing straight into her. A second later, the incoming SWAT team joined in, the first responder at the back room piercing Charlene’s jerking body with a burst of rounds. It was the longest three seconds of Dante’s life, seemingly endless noise and screams as Charlene tried to empty her gun into the men killing her. Dante felt something hot hit his vest and then a punch of pain before the air rushed out of his lungs, but he stood firm, needing to see Charlene drop.
She fell hard, a broken aging fashion doll with popped-out legs and arms. He moved forward, covering her with his weapon, but a milky film was already filling her lifeless eyes by the time Dante reached her side. Puddles of blood were beginning to form beneath her still twitching body, running hot into large pools under her punctured torso. A moment later, her body gave up its fight, collapsing in on itself as her chest gave up its final breath.
A hand on his shoulder startled Dante, and he whirled about, nearly clocking Hank in the face. Breathing hard, he got a grip on himself as the SWAT team poured into the front room around him.
“Ironic,” Hank croaked loudly.
“What?” Dante quickly stepped back to avoid the blood sluggishly leaking from Charlene’s already cooling body.
“That’s pretty much where we found Dani,” his partner tsked. “Guess you really do reap what you sow.”