Blood and Bone (14 page)

“So talk,” Angela said. She was taking clothes from a laundry basket on the table at the kitchenette end of the room, folding each piece with machine-like precision and placing them neatly on the table. Her clothes were stacked by category, socks here, underwear there, skirts, blouses, pants, all neatly folded.

“You told Doctor Cummings you were Bobby Newton's daughter,” Nieswand said, standing at the other end of the table. “How does your name come to be Briggs.”

“My last foster father,” she said, never looking up from her careful folding. “All I can remember of childhood is a series of foster parents. Then, in junior high, I got picked up by Samuel Briggs. He was a sweet old man. I didn't like school but he turned me on to books and, you know, learning because you want to know.”

“And this was in?”

Angela glared at Nieswand, bristling at his apparent skepticism. “We lived in Corpus Christi. I went through high school there. Graduated third in my class.”

Near the door, Hannibal watched the hard look on Nieswand's face. A few questions had turned into an interrogation. Nieswand's face was cold and Hannibal suddenly realized this man could do anything he thought necessary. He must be vicious in court, Hannibal thought.

“He was obviously a kind, loving man,” Nieswand said, stepping a bit closer. “I'll bet he considered you his own daughter in every way. I'm rather surprised he told you about your birth parents.”

“Mister Briggs died right after I graduated,” she said. There was no emotion in the statement, but the empty space it left implied the pain and sorrow had simply dried up. “He didn't leave much money, but he did leave me a note and a birth certificate. He thought I should know who I really was. I'm still looking.”

She turned empty eyes toward Nieswand and he smiled in return. But Hannibal knew it was not the genuine smile he had seen before. This was his game face. So his next words surprised Hannibal.

“Angela, Bobby Newton was a stage name for Jacob Mortimer. The Mortimer family has been searching for Jacob for years without success. Now, you might be their only link to him. Would you be willing to come with me to meet them?”

Life sprang into Angela's face, and she put a tee shirt down without folding it. “Meet them? If they might be related to me, of course I'll meet them. When can we go?”

Angela grabbed a small purse and headed toward her door. As Hannibal turned to open it for her, his phone rang. He answered it on the way down the hall.

“Jones? This is Dalton. Got some news for you.”

He sounded tired to Hannibal, but then he always sounded tired. “You going to tell me where Wally Lerner went when he finally left his place?”

“I'm going to tell you my guys screwed up,” Dalton said. “Somehow, they lost him. He got out without them seeing him. I'm afraid he's gone.”

“Damn. Well, will you keep the place under surveillance? Never know. He might be stupid enough to come back.”

Hannibal reached the bottom of the stairs and went out into the sunlight, but behind his lenses it was still dark. He barely heard Nieswand saying good-bye as he and Angela climbed into the Mercedes. He did notice an annoying lack of surprise on Angela's face. When he was her age, boarding a Mercedes would have been an electric experience. But he said nothing, because his mind was on other matters.

“Dalton, do you have any leads on Lerner? You know his brother's the prime suspect in a Virginia murder now. Aside from that, I owe him a beating, and I owe him for taking my car and driving it like a demolition derby.”

“Look, son, I'm doing what I can,” Dalton said, “but I don't give a rat's ass about your personal revenge. I'll chase him like any other murder suspect and no snot-nosed P.I. is going to tell me how. Hey. What's that noise?”

Damn! “Got another call coming in,” Hannibal said. “I'll talk to you later.” He cut the connection with Dalton while getting into his own car. Frustrated, he let his forehead drop to the steering wheel. “What the hell else can happen?” he asked aloud, then answered the phone.

“Hannibal, this is Sarge.”

“Sarge, how's it going?” Hannibal asked, turning the key to nudge the Volvo's smooth engine into life. “Is our guest getting restless?”

“Not exactly, Hannibal.” The tension in Sarge's voice drew Hannibal's close attention. “We had a little action here.”

“Floyd's boys come back to play?” Hannibal asked.

“Not like the last time, no, but I think it was them. This was a drive by. Five nine millimeter bullets through your front windows.”

Two matched pairs of BF Goodrich Comp T/A tires locked up and screeched to a halt in front of Hannibal's building. His car vibrated when he slammed the door. He stared for a few seconds at his front office windows, largely missing. He stared up and down the street, looking for a good target for his anger before crossing the sidewalk. His shoes tapped up the outside steps like machine gun fire. He burst into his office, to find Sarge in the visitor's chair pointing a shotgun his way.

“It's good to see you're all right, man,” Hannibal said. Sarge nodded. Then rapid-fire footsteps approached from the back of the building. Hannibal could smell Jewel's fear before she came into view. She threw her arms around him, less like a lover than like a drowning man clutching a life preserver.

“Oh, thank God you're here. God, there were bullets everywhere and I was sure I was dead. He's crazy. He's crazy and he wants to kill me and I know only you can save me. I'll pay anything, anything.”

Hannibal kept his eyes on Sarge while he pulled Jewel's arms down from his neck. “Tell me what happened.”

“Not much to tell,” Sarge replied. “I'm sitting in here, Jewel's at the desk, starting to get the hang of surfing the net, you know. Black Cadillac cruises by,
three or four brothers inside. An arm comes out the window and fires five shots at us. I kind of land on top of Jewel, all the shots go over our heads. Mother Washington was in the kitchen but you know the Lord looks out for her. When I gets up, the car's gone. I sent Mother Washington on home. Only casualty's your machine.”

As Sarge talked, Hannibal's breathing deepened and his lips curled in, revealing his teeth. He walked slowly behind his desk. Window glass still littered the floor five feet out from the windows. Sunlight sent painful reflections up into Hannibal's eyes. His computer's monitor was now a hollow box and one of the bullets had smashed his keyboard.

“Okay,” he said, finally looking at Jewel, “where does the son of a bitch live?”

The man on the stoop was obviously a guard, broad and squat, his bald head shining like a bowling ball. Floyd's chosen guard type. He was more alert than the men Hannibal met before, but by the time he figured out how to react, Hannibal figured it would be too late. He set his emergency brake, got out of the car, and stalked directly toward the man. Momentarily flustered, the guard braced himself like a linebacker, his right hand moving slowly toward his waistband. Hannibal stopped three steps from the top of the stoop.

“You know who I am?”

The guard nodded, pulled a stiletto and stepped back two paces. Aside from jeans and sneakers, he wore a black tee shirt and a ball cap with the letter X on the front.

“You really want those to be the clothes they bury you in?” Hannibal asked. “Put that down before you piss me off.”

“You get out of here, Jones,” the muscular man said. “You supposed to be tough but your rep don't mean shit to me.”

Hannibal nodded. Another mouth-powered idiot, probably on drugs. He turned his head, as if checking on something over his right shoulder. Then his left hand whipped past the guard and his right foot spun around him. His right heel whipped back, around and up, cracking like a flail against the guard's right elbow. With a strangled cry, the guard dropped the knife and fell to his knees. Hannibal stepped past him into the building.

Inside, the smell of musk and malt liquor hung in the air. Hannibal burst up the narrow stairs to the second floor where he knew his target was busy gambling, or drinking, or doing drugs or getting laid. Not that it mattered. Whatever he was doing, he was about to be interrupted.

Bass-heavy music rattled Floyd's door on its way out. Idiots. A platoon of police could storm the hall unanticipated. If they cared to. Disgusted, Hannibal drew his Sig Sauer P229 from its holster, took a deep breath and executed a front stamp kick. Floyd had installed a good lock, but the door sill was thin wood which splintered easily. The door flew open and slammed against the wall on the inside.

“Just don't,” Hannibal said as he stepped in. Through his dark lenses and a thick cloud of marijuana smoke, he saw Floyd playing cards with his two lieutenants and three fairly attractive girls. The girls all appeared to be on the losing end of a game of strip poker. He had seldom seen such an impressive collection of dilated pupils.

He was surprised, first, that all the furniture, and even the stereo, were high-end items, the most
expensive things available, but poorly cared for. His second surprise was Lawrence's ability to react, almost like a professional. He dropped the joint from his left hand and the cards from his right and produced a gun from his waistband in a fraction of a second. Hannibal sent a forty caliber hollow point slug through his right biceps. The impact drove Lawrence to the floor. The women screamed and slapped hands over their ears against the gun blast. The raised arms made three pairs of nipples jump humorously.

“Girls out, men freeze,” Hannibal snapped. The women scrambled and stumbled through the door without a backward glance.

“You a dead man,” Floyd muttered, the scar over his left eye flaring red.

Hannibal stepped within arm's reach and spoke what sounded like three harsh words: “Shut! The fuck! Up!” After which he backhanded Joey with his gun. The big man dropped to the floor and did not move. Hannibal then slid his pistol back under his right arm and snatched Floyd up by his collar. The player's face twisted into a snarl and he started to resist, so Hannibal slammed him into the wall. That brought the widened eyes he was looking for. He jammed his knee up between Floyd's legs to hold him in place and put his face so close to Floyd's they almost touched. Close enough to finally smell fear.

“Did you think you could threaten my friends and just go about your business? Did you think you could shoot up my office and I'd just ignore it? Huh?” Hannibal slammed his right fist into Floyd's stomach. Once. Twice. Three times and Floyd began coughing like he was about to retch. Hannibal stopped him with a forearm across his throat.

“What do you want?” Floyd gasped. “What is it with you?”

“Me?” Hannibal's throat, restricted by rage, only allowed his voice out in a strained growl. “Well I ain't no hooker. Hookers are all scared of you. And I ain't no cop. Cops play by rules. And I ain't another pimp or gangster. They all hide behind a gang of muscle men. See, I take care of trouble up close and personal. You ain't never met a nigger like me.”

While Hannibal stared into Floyd's cruel but terrified eyes, he saw realization dawn. Under the threat of physical damage, Floyd suddenly appeared to have a light bulb moment.

“Look, why don't I just forget Jewel ever existed?” Floyd croaked. “If she can go straight, good for her. She can go anywhere she wants. She can go on back up to Jersey where I picked her up last year.”

Hannibal eased the pressure on Floyd's throat as those words sifted down into his brain. “You hang out in Atlantic City?”

“Sometimes,” Floyd stammered, as if he was not sure if admitting it was a mistake. “Lot of girls up there, working independent. I can usually find seasoned girls like Jewel up there.”

“You might just come out of this with a whole skin, pimp,” Hannibal said, spinning Floyd around and tossing him onto the dirty leather couch across the room. Hannibal spun a chair away from the table, faced its back toward Floyd, and dropped onto it. He again drew his automatic and aimed it casually at Floyd's nose.

“I was thinking of breaking your arm,” Hannibal said, “or maybe blowing out one your knees. That would be fair for shooting at my client and ruining my
computer. But maybe I won't if you turn out to be of some use. So, give me the 411 on Zack King.”

Floyd screwed his forehead up into a puzzled expression. “Who?”

Hannibal squeezed his trigger, and a hole opened up in the front of the sofa, less than two inches below Floyd's crotch. The pimp drew a sharp breath. He controlled his voice, avoiding a scream, but he could not stop drops of moisture from welling up on his forehead and dripping down his face.

“You mean Zack King in Jersey,” he said, as if the original question had somehow confused him. “White guy, runs a club up there. Has prize fights there, and takes bets on his fighters.”

“His fighters?”

“Well, yeah,” Floyd leaned forward, as if confiding in a friend. “He runs a gym downtown where most of the fighters train. I think he's skimming a pretty good amount off the gambling, because he knows the fighters so well.”

Hannibal heard Joey stirring behind him, but he put his gun away and continued talking to Floyd. “You know, Floyd my man, if you tell me exactly where this place is, and stay away from my client, you might not get your ass kicked today.” Then he stood to face Joey. “You, on the other hand, just need to sit down and shut up.” Joey hesitated, fists curled but face blank.

“Look man, I been kickboxing since I was sixteen,” Hannibal said. “You're nothing like fast enough, or skillful enough to take me. If you got any sense, you'll get your buddy there to a doctor before he bleeds to death.”

Joey continued to stand, facing Hannibal. He never looked at Floyd, but his eyes wandered from Hannibal's face to his hands and back again.