Chapter 1

 

The morning started off just like any other summer morning in Central Florida. Bright and sunny, the thermometer already nudging closer and closer to eighty degrees, and with just a few strings of clouds drifting lazily in the sky.

I woke at around eight—my usual wakeup time nowadays. Like most folks, I’d come to realize the hard way that by the time one reaches the unpleasant age of forty, he fully understands that his chances of saving the world by getting up disgustingly early are slim at best, and that the world will go on as usual, no matter what time of day it happens to be.

After a shower and a shave, I shuffled into the kitchen in my bathrobe, and was in the process of making coffee when the doorbell buzzed.

I immediately spun around and gawked at the front door as if some hideous monster from a horror flick was about to burst in and select me for its breakfast snack.

Being a private eye for the last decade and a half, I’d become more than slightly suspicious by nature. And when someone buzzes your doorbell at eight-thirty in the morning, red flags automatically go up, your head begins to spin, and you find yourself wondering who in blazes could be standing on your front stoop.

I haven’t gotten the morning paper for years, so I knew for a fact that a paperboy wasn’t standing around out there, waiting to be paid for my subscription. And the mail didn’t usually arrive at the complex until after ten o’clock. Besides, I wasn’t expecting anything from the postman—at least not for the next hour and a half.

Uneasy and somewhat flustered, I checked the wall clock in the living room to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. It wasn’t that I was shitfaced from having spent the previous night at some wild party—although I wouldn’t have minded being invited to one of those once in a while. But when you find yourself rapidly approaching the dreaded halfway point that separates forty from fifty, you realize that most of the fun things in your life are now behind you, and that everything else has become nothing more than wishful thinking. I’d spent the previous night quietly, as usual, and after yet one more in a long string of uneventful weekends, discovered once again that life may not have begun at forty, but it sure as hell felt like it had ended—or at least tapered off—at that cursed age.

Even so, my hackles were up, and my defense mechanism was already switched to the on mode. Before tiptoeing to the front door, I grabbed my trusty Cheetah .380, which I kept hidden underneath a dishtowel on the sink counter. For emergencies, of course. I didn’t expect trouble at such an early hour, but a private detective quickly learns early on in his career how easy it is to make enemies, and that these fiends seldom care what hour of the day they choose to wreak their vengeance.

Once I reached the door, I peered through the peephole. And sighed in great relief when I saw the figure out there on my front stoop.

Neil Haversack was standing at my front door in his uniform. He looked even more uncomfortable than usual. In fact, I could tell by his body language—and also by the fact that he was glancing in every conceivable direction to see if anyone was watching him—that he really didn’t want to be standing where he was.

On impulse, I rubbed my eyes. Then waited for my vision to clear before attempting another peek. It wasn’t that I didn’t accept what I was looking at. I just decided that I had to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.

The doorbell buzzed again.

I knew right then that I should open the door. Otherwise, Neil would get mad and start pounding. I wasn’t ready for something like that. Especially since I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee. Neil was hard to take when things were going smoothly. However, before coffee and breakfast, dealing with him would be like arguing with a wounded bear.  

Taking a breath, I slid the chain out of its slot, unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Neil stood there, looking like he was about to explode. The first thing he noticed was the gun in my hand. The second thing he saw was that my robe was partially open. Instead of mentioning the gun or the robe, he just said, “Took ya long enough.” Then he bulled his way past me. “By the way, don’t shoot me, Deacon. I didn’t come here to die. And close that damn robe. I’m not in the mood for laughs this early in the morning.”

He was checking out my apartment as I closed the door. I fastened my robe and realized that he was actually standing in my living room. Neil had been here before, but under much different circumstances. And it had been quite a while ago. He just wasn’t the chummy type who went around, visiting his buds in his spare time. Especially so early in the morning.

This told me something bad—or very important—was up.

When I found my voice, I said, “Morning, Neil…”

“Yeah. Whatever.” He glanced toward the kitchen and sniffed. “Coffee made yet?”

“It should be ready any second. Have a seat.” I gestured to the couch.

He grumbled something incomprehensible and sat down. I couldn’t help noticing how uncomfortable he looked, sitting there, staring at my TV and stereo setup. He seemed worried that he’d caught me at some inopportune moment. I wanted to tell him I was alone but didn’t want to ruin the moment. I discovered that I was really enjoying this. I resisted the overwhelming urge to tell him a local stripper was waiting for me in my bedroom. That would have been cruel. It would have also depressed me later on, when I went back into the bedroom to change clothes and noticed the empty bed.

I figured Neil had come here for something important. Since we’d been friends such a long time, I guessed that he wanted me for something he didn’t want to ask anyone else to do. He also knew I’d do whatever he needed done, so I decided to make this a little more challenging for him.

“Nice weather we’ve been having,” I said.

“Cork it, Deacon,” he snapped. “I’m not here ‘cause I wanna be.”

“I figured as much.”

“How could you tell?”

I shrugged. “You’ve never seemed the sort to stop over before work, have some good coffee for a change and chew the fat. Besides, you don’t live anywhere near this part of town. This tells me you came here on purpose.”

He turned toward the kitchen. “That damn coffee ready yet?”

I got up and went into the kitchen. When I turned to grab a couple of cups from the drainer, I saw that he’d come over and planted his fleshy butt on one of my two barstools on the other side of the open counter.

“It’s ready,” I said.

He was obviously waiting for me to start pouring. When I didn’t move fast enough, he said, “You need an invitation?”

“For what?”

“Deacon, pour me some damn coffee and quit trying to be cute.”

I poured two cups and added a sugar cube to mine. Knowing he took his black, I slid it over. He grabbed it, lifted it, and sipped. Then scowled and set it back down on the counter in front of him.

“So…what’s going on in your neck of the woods?” I put my cup on the counter. “What’s the nature of this mildly pleasant but extremely spontaneous little visit?”

“Cut the crap, Deacon. You know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

“This is important? Really?” I couldn’t help myself. “Well, gee golly!”

His glare didn’t wane. “You gonna be serious for once? Or do I gotta blow your head off and plead temporary insanity?”

“All righty, then.” I took my coffee into the living room and sat on the couch. “Tell me what’s going on.”

He came over and sat down at the other end. He had another sip from his cup and sat back. “Actually, I need your help.”

“See there? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Yeah. It was. Damned hard.”

“Okay. Now that we’ve got the damned hard stuff out of the way…” I had more coffee and waited.

“It’s like this, Deacon. I need someone I can trust.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

He ignored that—which told me right then that he was not in his usual quippy mood. “This involves my niece.”

“Your sister’s daughter?”

He glared. “That’s what a niece is, isn’t it?”

“Well, she could be your brother’s daughter—”

“I don’t have a brother and you know it. Asshole.”

“Or maybe, if you take that once-removed crap and stick it in the equation—”

“You can stick yours where the sun don’t shine, Deacon…”

“Ouch. Sounds painful.”

Neil groaned and rubbed his temples.

Nope, definitely not in the mood for quips.

“Okay, then. Now that we’ve got the girl’s family roots established…”

“Are you gonna shut up and let me tell ya what you need to know?”

“Does this mean you’re actually hiring me for something?”

“I wouldn’ta come over here for the coffee…”

“It’s helluva lot better than that crap you drink all day at the Station.”

Neil looked like he’d just smelled something horrible. “This is flavored, dammit. It’s got vanilla in it. Or that fancy shit those damn Brazilians stick in it—”

“It’s Swiss mocha. I thought I’d experiment, try something different.”

Neil winced and put the cup down. “Now I think I might be sick.”

“Don’t be silly. Let’s get back to the important issue. You’re actually hiring me?”

“You could say that.”

Something about this didn’t make any sense. Neil was a lot of things, but being generous with his money wasn’t something he was noted for. This told me that whatever he was involved with was an emergency. “You know how much I charge, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do. But this is my niece we’re talking about, now.”

“Your sister’s daughter.”

“I already told ya that. Let’s get on with this, all right?”

“I guess we could do that, since you’re already here, and haven’t come just to chew the fat or drink the bad coffee…”

He sighed. “Like I just said—”

“What’s her name?”

“Huh?”

“If this involves your niece, and if you really want me in on this, I think I should know a few incidentals. I’m funny that way. For one thing, it really helps to know the name of the niece of the man who’s paying me—”

“Erin, dammit.”

I thought that one over. “Her name is Erin Dammit. I see… Is Dammit her middle name? Or—”

“Deacon, you’re an asshole.”

“Now what does that have to do with anything?”

“Just stating a fact. Now…can we please get back to why I’m here? I’m sure you can tell by now that I really don’t wanna be here in the first place.”

“You’ve only mentioned that a couple of times before. Besides, I could tell that when I first looked through the peephole and saw you trying to turn into Claude Rains. What’s wrong? Is it the neighborhood? The tennis courts overlooking the lake? The fresh air? The strong scent of honeysuckle playing nice with your pheromones?”

He sighed and suddenly looked tired. “Deacon, dammit…”

“Sorry. Go ahead, Neil. Tell me. I promise I’ll actually listen this time.”

He took a breath and rubbed his temples. Then he sat back and took another breath. “Like I said, this involves Erin, and it’s pretty bad.”

“How bad is pretty bad?”

“As bad as it gets.”

“Then it’s much worse than just pretty bad?”

Neil suddenly looked grim. “Someone tried to snatch her. At gunpoint.”

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

After a quick breakfast, I got in my classic TransAm and drove directly to OPD in downtown Orlando.

My mind had been working nonstop ever since Neil had left my apartment, and I hardly even remembered the drive to the Station.

According to what Neil had told me, his niece, Erin Dobbs, was being held somewhere in Police Headquarters by Detective Miranda Benton, an undercover cop he’d known for several years. Neil had also told me in strict confidence that Benton was one of the few cops he trusted with his niece’s life.

“Benton’s good,” he’d told me back in my apartment. “She’s also tough and won’t put up with any shit. She’ll stay with Erin and won’t let anyone talk to her until we get there.”

“Just how did this all happen?” I’d asked. “Are drugs involved?”

“Erin’s not on drugs.” Neil’s instant frown suggested that he didn’t appreciate the question. “Never has been. I know how that sounds, coming from an uncle, especially since I don’t see much of her at all these days. But I’d know. Her mother would have told me. Jane and Erin have been close for years. Erin’s not the type to put anything in her body that would hurt her or impede her judgment. She’s athletic and has been health-minded since junior high. She was heavy into volleyball and track, even took dancing lessons for three or four years in grade school. She can’t stand the taste of alcohol or beer. A glass of wine puts her out like a light.”

“Drugs are different,” I’d argued.

“She told me she tried weed once at a party and got sick to her stomach. She said she was nauseous for two days. She goes to Rollins, Deacon. She’s in her third year. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’s a very smart, sensible girl.”

“Lots of women are smart.” I hadn’t wanted to sound so negative, but since he’d picked me to confide in, I had to put aside our friendship and approach this objectively. “A few of them are even smart and sensible. But that doesn’t mean they’ll put their intelligence and common sense into high gear when they stumble across some guy with a mouthful of great lines. Hormones always win out, my friend. You know that as well as I do. And that goes for both sexes. We all have our weak spots. Every single one of us.”

Neil then told me about some guy Erin had recently hooked up with. He was the guy this entire matter seemed to be all about. Johnny Grayson was his name. Erin had met him at one of the local Winter Park clubs just a few weeks ago. Since Erin was only twenty, she’d borrowed a fake ID from one of her friends so she could join them inside, meet people and dance. She and her girlfriends went to this same place a couple of times before. Erin met Grayson on the dance floor. He had some good moves, and “a girl her age,” as Neil had said, “really goes for a guy with good moves.”

“What else does he have?” I’d asked. “Expensive clothes? A fancy ride?”

“She says he’s a great dresser and drives a red Vette.”

“Old? Or new?”

“Brand-new.”

That made me suspicious. “We’re talking upwards of sixty or eighty K. Just how old is this character?”

“He told Erin twenty-nine, but she said he looks and acts older. Maybe thirty-two or so.”

“That’s a lot of jack for a guy that age. Unless the Vette’s a lease.”

“He told her he bought and paid cash for it.”

“Then he’s either lying to make himself look good or he’s into stolen cars or drugs. Or he could be one of those Internet geeks who turned billionaire by his twentieth birthday.”

“She said he’s good-looking.”

“Geeks are out, then. The ones I’ve seen actually look like geeks. No, he’s definitely into something heavy.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“She didn’t say anything else about him?”

“Apparently someone’s been following her for the last few days. And some asshole in a good suit scared the crap out of her when she went to the Mall with two of her friends. This was what prompted Jane to call and set me straight about what’s going on. And why I’m here with ya right now.”

“How’d he scare her?”

“At gunpoint.”

“He pointed a gun at her?”

“He showed it to her. Casually.”

“Her friends see it, too?”

“That’s where the story gets a little cloudy.”

My suspicions went up again. “What exactly happened?”

“Erin said they’d just walked out of one of the boot outlets when they all decided to visit the ladies’ room.”

I shook my head. “That never ceases to amaze me.”

“Howzat?”

“Women going to the bathroom together.”

Neil groaned.

“Doesn’t it amaze you?”

“Deacon…”

“Look at it this way and you’ll understand where I’m coming from. You and I and some other guy are out doing things together—maybe at the shooting range, or skinning a deer, or perhaps going after wild boars with crossbows. Or maybe we were rock-climbing—”

“Dammit, Deacon…”

“Anyway, I decide I need to use the toilet. Would you and the other guy jump in and say, “Yippie! Let’s all go!”? Or would I just wander off into the bushes and—”

“Deacon, shuddup.”

I shrugged. “Just making a point.”

“Make it later. This is serious.”

“Then please do go on.”

“Like I said, they were all on their way to the ladies’ room when this guy suddenly appears.”

“Appears? You mean, like a ghost?”

“Don’t be stupid. He’d obviously been following them and stepped in front of her before she could follow her friends in.”

“Then no one else saw him?”

“Once again, this is where the story gets hazy.”

I didn’t want Neil to know how suspicious I was of all this. I figured he was suspicious as well, even though his niece was involved. Neil was a cop. A good one. But since this involved his family, he had to tread lightly. And since I was his friend, so did I.

“What happened then?”

“He took her aside and said that she needed to come along with him. He had a few questions to ask her.”

“What sort of questions?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Then he showed her the gun?”

“He made the action really subtle. He had his hand in his jacket pocket and kind of pulled it out an inch or two. Just enough for her to see the piece in the holster attached to his hip.”

“Clever. What did she do?”

“Whaddya think? She got scared.”

“She run?”

“By this time, her two friends had noticed she was no longer with them and came back out to see what was wrong.”

“What about the gun guy?”

“He’d already disappeared.”

“That quick?”

“Just blended into the passing crowd, obviously.”

“Slick.”

Neil nodded. “Too damn slick.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Professional.”

“Maybe a hitter, maybe not. Could be some sort of enforcer.”

Neil gave me one of his grim expressions. “Yeah. But ya know what we gotta do, right?”

“Exactly. Treat him as a pro.”

“And consider ourselves damn lucky if, by some fluke, he turns out to be just some mob shyster.”

“Did she give you a description?”

“Six feet, one-fifty, well-dressed, black hair in a buzz cut, dark eyes, low forehead. And carrying a big, scary-ass gun.”

“Good description.”

Neil nodded. “She’s the niece of a damn good cop.”

“I’m wondering about the dark eyes and hair. And especially the low forehead. Hispanic, maybe?”

“Might be.”

“So now we might be looking at something involving Vega?”

“I’m sure as hell hoping not.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Not even a hint?”

“Nope.”

“She didn’t by any chance try to follow him, did she? To see where he went? If there was anyone with him?”

“She was so damn scared, she ran into the ladies’ room and lost her nut. Once she’d calmed down, she asked them to take her right home. Jane called me about half an hour later, told me about it. This was two days ago.”

“You sure she’s not into anything else?”

“Positive.”

“Then this is all about Grayson. He’s the one we have to start looking for.”

“No doubt.”

Neil got up and began pacing. Pacing, wandering over to the door and scanning the peephole to make sure his cruiser was still parked in the visitor’s spot directly across the street next to my TransAm. Then he turned around and checked out my CD and vinyl collection on the shelves of my stereo cabinet. I could tell he was irritated and frustrated and didn’t quite know how to handle this. His niece could be involved in something really bad and he didn’t want to believe it.

After a few minutes, he came back to the sofa and sat. He didn’t say anything and began staring at his hands. I could tell he was really worried and hated asking help from anyone. But he knew he couldn’t look into this himself without involving anyone else from the Department and risk it leaking out so everyone knew what was going on. And keeping anything quiet in a building full of cops was impossible.

“So tell me more about this Grayson,” I said after a short while.

“I’ve got some folks trying to find him, but it’s hard keeping this low-profile. I wanna question the bastard but I don’t want just anyone hearing about it. It this does blow, we’ll have to find some place to stash Erin till it dies. That could take weeks, and it could mess up her senior year at Rollins. But if it does involve Vega, I won’t want this hanging over her head. Hell, we might have to send her somewhere. Vega’s one stubborn Hispanic. And he holds a grudge. He also has one long-ass memory.”

“It’s obvious someone considers Erin some sort of threat. Or obstacle. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been approached or threatened.”

“I talked to her, Deacon. She doesn’t know anything.”

“How can you know for sure?”

“I talked to the girl for an hour. I used every tactic I knew. Even some of that psychiatric crap they shoved into my skull years ago from a couple of those courses I had to take when I wanted to get promoted. She’s a naïve, impressionable young girl. She wasn’t hiding anything. I could tell.”

“Then we just have to assume that she doesn’t know anything, and that someone who’s gone to the Goons & Guns store—or owns the Goons & Guns store—thinks she does know something. Or thinks she’s standing in someone’s way.”

“That’s about all we can do.”

Something had been chafing at my shorts all through this, and I soon found that I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Neil, tell me something.”

“Does this have anything to do with why I’m here?”

“Actually, I’m much more interested in why you picked me of all people to help with this.”

“Same damn thing, smartass.”

“Well, then, let loose with the epiphany.”

He sighed. I could tell this was difficult for him. Neil had never been a feelings sort of guy.

“I chose you because this is my sister’s daughter, and I can’t trust too damn many people at the Station because I’ve seen too much corruption come into that building in the last fifteen years. I know there are a few honest, really good cops working there, but I have to assume everyone else is corrupt, on the take, not trained well enough or just not trustworthy. I also chose you because you seem to have at least eight senses, and you’re never wrong when using them. You’ve never let me down, and you’ve never lied to me.” He took a long breath. “Now…do we start hugging one another about this time? If that’s what you’re expecting, don’t get your hopes up, because that’s where I draw the line.”

“No, Neil. I ain’t exactly the guy-hugging type, either.”

“Thank God for small favors.”